F R. O M 

TOKIO 



CLARENCE LUDLOW BROVNELL 



JAPAN REFERENCE 
LIBRARY 

NEW YORK 








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TALES FROM TOKIO. 



TALES PROn TOKiO 



BY 



CLARENCE LUDLOW BROWNELL 



1900 
QUAIL & WARNER 



NEW YORK 




JAPAN REFERENCE ' 
LIBRARY 

NEW YORK 






COPYRIGHT, 1899, 
BY WARNER AND BROWNELL. 



Second Edition. 



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OCT 2 1344 



TO 
JOHN GARDNER COOLIDGE 

TO 

YUSHOKWAN 
TO 

KOMORI SENSHO SAMA 



NOTE. 

These tales came over the Pacific from 
Tokio some years ago with the Talesman and 
landed in the beautiful city of Tacoma, which 
the townsfolk call the City of Destiny. 

Both Tales and Talesman liked the Town 
but their destiny lay not there; for the Town 
had small need of Tales such as the Tales- 
man told, being busy with Tall Trees, Rail- 
roads and Real Estate. Therefore the Tales- 
man detaching the moss from his MSS. 
journeyed eastward and found a kindly audi- 
ence in the Greater City of New York. He 
makes acknowledgement gratefully to the 
New York Press and to the Evening Post for 
courteous permission to reprint such of the 
Tales as have appeared therein. 



CONTENTS. 

Okusama 1 1 

Mukashi lyemushi 19 

Furo Oke 3^ 

Kaso 43 

Junsa 53 

Cho Kimi Make, Han Boku Kachi 61 

Oyasumi Nasai 'J'] 

Kane Nai Nareiba 93 

Yaso No Senkiyoshi 103 

Otokorashi Onna 113 

Tokio No Hana 125 

Shimbun 133 

Ojigi to Niu Satsu 147 

Butsuzo Koshite 153 

Ganjitsu 161 

Shibaya to Yakusha 171 

Rio 183 

Uta 191 

Geisha 199 

Turampu 211 

Syonara 219 

Nihon No Ichiban Shiwai Jimbutsu.. . 229 



OKUSAMA. 



OKUSAMA. 

O Toyo San sits tapping the ashes from her 
silver pipe in one of the small thatched 
houses that stand just ouside the blackened 
walls of Tatsumi, waiting for her kurumaya, 
who has dropped the shafts of his jin-riki-sha 
and is taking a bowl of rice with some old 
friends at the gate where he has served so 
many years. O Toyo is on her way to Biwa, 
and farther south, and has stopped at the cot- 
tage on her way that she may see her children. 

There is a longing in her eyes as she sits 
half kneeling on the little square mat by the 
brazier, now arranging the bits of charcoal 
with her tongs and now taking a bit of tobacco 
for her pipe from the pouch beside her on 
the matting. Her face is gentle and sweet 
to look upon. When she smiles her eyes 
sparkle and her parting lips discover pearly 
teeth that have never needed a dentists care. 
But her smile is hardly more than courtesy 
despite its gentle look, for there is a yearning 
13 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

in her heart that a woman of another race 
could not conceal. She is a mother but her 
children are growing up almost as strangers 
to her. It is not her fault at all. Her parents 
had arranged her marriage when she was 
hardly in her teens without asking her whether 
she would or not. Obedience was the only- 
law she knew, and with filial piety (why is 
there not an Old English equivalent for this 
term ?) she had done her parent's bidding, 
not questioning their choice. Her lot had 
been that of many another native woman. It 
is typical. 



O Toyo San must wait outside to see the 
children born to her in Tatsumi, a girl and a 
boy. The boy, O Bo Chan, as the house folk 
call him, is heir to the ancient manor. The 
master of Tatsumi is lord of all the region 
round. He has owned Hombo, the village 
extending northward ever since men first 
abode there, and the checker-board of rice 
fields reaching far out toward the boundaries 
of Niu Gun, one of the richest counties in the 
famous province of Echizen. 

Those, however, who have long known 
Tatsumi and the lord thereof doubt if much 
14 



OKUSAMA. 

but the name of these great possessions will 
be left by the time O Bo Chan has come to 
man's estate. Bo's grandfather has been in- 
kiyo many years. Before he retired from 
active life to devote himself to study and 
meditation he had lived like a prince, but well 
within his income. When he handed over his 
estates to his son, Hikusaburo, he had ac- 
companied the transfer with much good ad- 
vice which the heir had acknowledged duti- 
fully saying "kashi komari mashita"and**saio 
de gozaimasu" frequently. 

But Tatsumi's friends said **neko ni koban" 
(gold coins to a cat) when they spoke among 
themselves, though in public they held their 
peace. 

Since then their silent prophecy has been 
fulfilling rapidly, but the inkiyo has not paid 
heed. His cares for this life are over and his 
days are sweet and peaceful. O Kamu San, 
his honored wife saw plainly but she could 
not speak. Indeed, soon she was O Kamu 
San no longer, only O Ba San, grandmother. 
Her son had become the head of the house 
and her duty, as a woman's duty ever is in 
Japan, was to obey, not to criticise. 

So Hikusaburo had free way. Never did 
15 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

any one say no to him. His father had given 
to him O Toyo San before he was done with 
school. She was the daughter of a rich rela- 
tion, a sake brewer. Like all other native 
marriages, it was purely a family agreement, 
without civil or religious ceremony, and of 
course both houses were happy over the 
event. 

When the bride arrived at the home of her 
new parents, dressed in silken robes and her 
face painted white as chalk, the place was 
thronged with guests. Tatsumi threw wide 
its gates, and there was feasting for a week. 
Clam broth and mushrooms were dispensed 
lavishly; there was joy throughout the whole 
of Echizen. 

Later, when a boy was born, the old walls 
once more overflowed with joyousness. Oji 
San smiled at his grandchild, and seeing that 
it was a healthy babe, put his affairs in order 
and became inkiyo. Hikusaburo aided him 
in this, for he was eager to take control. He 
accepted everything with due humility, even 
to the patriarchal blessing and advice. Then 
he began the life he had longed to lead. His 
home saw little of him, except when he came 
in with a band of geisha and made merry till 
i6 



OKUSAMA. 

the sun rose. Wherever he went the samisen 
began to twang, and the moon-fiddle, the 
koto and the drum to fill the air. 

One day Hikusaburo, who now was the fa- 
ther of two children, fell in love. He had been 
in love before often enough for a day or two, 
or possibly a week; but this time the feeling 
clung to him and hurt. Of course she was a 
geisha, for that was the only sort of woman 
Hikusaburo had paid attention to since he be- 
came lord of Tatsumi. He bought her release 
from the master who had trained her, and 
took her home, along with a dozen other of 
her sisters in the art of spending money. He 
feared lest she might be lonely. 

Tatsumi saw wilder times than ever it had 
known before. Sake flowed like water. Hom- 
bo hardly recognized itself. O Kamu San, 
Hikusaburo 's wife, only was unhappy. To 
see herself, the mother of two children, sup- 
planted by a doll not yet fourteen years old 
was too much even for her self-abnegation. 
The cheerfulness which the native code com- 
mands to women was not in evidence in her 
countenance. Hikusaburo spoke harshly,but 
she would not brighten up. Then he sent her 
home. 

17 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

She has not been within the walls of Tat- 
sumi since. She would not enter though not 
even a ghost were about the place. So she sits 
outside, waiting, while the melancholy music 
of the twanging samisen floats out from the 
zashiki, where once she was mistress and 
where now my lord makes merry with his 
doll. The kurumaya says that possibly when 
my lord is drunk she may see her children. 



MUKASHI lYEMUSHl. 



MUKASHI lYEMUSHI. 



Our landlord had a delightful home, a duti- 
ful son and a snap. The snap was we. We 
were in the capital city of Etchiu, on the west 
coast of Dai Nippon, looking out over the 
North Sea, as they call it there, toward the 
frozen Siberian coast. We were just from col- 
lege, and knew fully as much as the average 
college man about the world at large and 
about business in particular. 

Our landlord, Kintaro Okashi,was a samurai 
of the old school. He was brought up under 
the feudal system, and knew how to fight, as 
all gentlemen should in those days. If he knew 
anything else he concealed it during the year 
we lived with him. Of course, though, he 
knew how to make merry, and could handle 
artistically a brush dipped in red paint. He 
could make his evening environment look as 
though it had been lacquered with the hues 
of the setting sun; but such knowledge was not 
remarkable. Every one in Japan can do that. 

21 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

He was quite regardless of expense in this 
employment, for he was of gentle birth, and, 
besides, he had no money. The Government 
had pensioned him when it abolished the feu- 
dal system and caste, and there were legally 
no more samurai; but that pension was mort- 
gaged. Kintaro Okashi had spent forty years 
of it in advance. Consequently, when we, 
Gardner and I, went to him with a proposal to 
be our landlord, he welcomed us and bowed 
so low that he broke the floor. He said he 
loved Americans, and confided in a friend, as 
we learned afterward, that he considered young 
ones were better than a pension. It is only 
fair to say that he was brave whenever there 
was occasion and exceedingly generous when- 
ever he had anything to give. Often he put 
himself to great personal inconvenience to do 
a friend a favor. In those days, thanks to 
what was known as "the most favored nation 
clause" in Japan's treaty with the chief coun- 
tries of the world and to general bungling 
in the Department of Foreign Relations, out- 
siders could not own nor rent property in their 
own names, except in restricted districts of 
some half-dozen cities, such as Tokio, Yoko- 
hama, Kobe, Osaka, Nagasaki, Niigata, and 

22 



MUKASHI lYEMUSHI. 

Hakodate. As we wished to study Japanese 
life, we did not care to live in any of the for- 
eign concessions, where one never is quite in 
touch with real Japan. 

We went to the west coast, to a province 
where no foreigners had lived before; and, as 
we could not be our own landlord, we pro- 
ceeded to hire one. A friend recommended 
Okashi San, and we took him. According to 
our agreement, we hired him to hire us as in- 
structors in an English school that offered 
wonderful facilities for teaching the American 
language as spoken in New York. 

Okashi rented two buildings, one for the 
school and one for our living house. He lived 
with his family in the school, and for the first 
month his wife cooked for us, and both of 
them did our marketing. At the end of the 
month we called for the bills. Okashi San 
would not hear of it. "lye, iye ! " — "No, no ! " 
— he would repeat. "August pardon deign» 
but the school is a resplendent success, and I 
and my stupid wife are overwhelmed with 
honor. It is we who owe you." 

This went on for three days, until we began 
to believe Okashi meant it, and proceeded to 
put our money to other uses. When it had 
23 



TALES FROM TOKlO. 

thus been put he appeared before us one 
warm afternoon with a roll of thin brown pa- 
per exactly nineteen feet six inches in length. 
(We measured it along the edge of the tatami.) 
It was a bill. Okashi San made a bow for 
every foot in the strip and then began to read 
it to us. 

Many of the items were in fractions of a cent. 
One for pepper was $0.0153, or as the Japanese 
read it, "kosho is sen go rin sammo." Gard- 
ner said the sammo was unnecessary extrava- 
gance, as we could have gotten quite enough 
for an even '*is sen go rin. Three decimals was 
quite deep enough to go into kosho." 

Okashi bowed eight times and said, "Sayo 
de gozaimasu," — ^'Honorable truth so august- 
ly deigns to be." Which we interpreted grate- 
fully to imply that next month there would be 
economy in condiments. 

When the reading was over we learned the 
total was $21, or a little over $1 afoot. We 
had expected nothing less than $100, estim- 
ating by the length of time it took to read 
from the beginning to the end. As we did 
not have $2 1 , Gardner wired a friend in Tokio, 
and received $30 the next morning. Thirty 
dollars is the telegraph limit. We paid Okashi 
24 



MUKASHI lYEMUSHl. 

San the $2 1 , and he returned in half an hour 
with a red seal and a stamp at the end of his 
scroll, showing that the bill had been duly 
paid. 

We asked him if he was sure everything 
had been settled for, as we were not charmed 
with his having brought in a bill after so 
many protestations, and we wished to clean 
our slate entirely while we were about it. 

^'Indeed that is all," said our landlord. "It 
is everything, even the rent." 

Upon this we devised how we should dis- 
burse the $9 remaining out of the $30. We 
decided to study the famous "No" dancing, 
and our money evaporated pleasantly. 

The next day, as we sat on the tatami, won- 
dering if we should ever learn what to do 
with our legs, the karakami slid apart and 
Okashi Okusama appeared, bowing multitu- 
dinously. She had a roll of thin brown paper 
in her hand, like unto the one her husband 
had brought in, and she pushed it gently to- 
ward us as she bowed. 

*'We squared that all up yesterday,'* said 
Gardner. 

**Iye, O chigai masu de gozaimasu," said 
Okusama. 

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JAPAN REFERENCE 
LIBRARY 

NEW YORK 



^' 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

" 'Honorably different august is/ is it ?" 
asked Gardner. *'I dont think so. Let's see 
it." And he unrolled it along the tatami 
edge. 

"By Jove! you've added two feet," he ex- 
claimed. "And Where's the stamp and the 
seal ?" 

"Shirrimasen de gozaimasu," — "Not know- 
ing augustly am," — said Okusama. 

After a lengthy discussion we discovered 
that the twenty-one feet and six inches bill 
was a separate account, quite distinct from 
her husband's and as just. The pair had 
worked independently. Gardner had to wire 
Tokio for another $30. We got into such a 
mess trying to straighten out the double ac- 
count that we decided to hire a professional 
cook, and to let him pay cash for everything 
day by day as we went along. We paid him 
day by day, and so escaped monthly bills. 
This really lightened the work of our landlord 
and landlady greatly, but they disapproved 
the change, nevertheless; it had been such 
joy ordering things at the various shops about 
town. 

After this affairs went on smoothly for some 
time, until one morning Okashi San handed 
26 



MUKASHI lYEMUSHI. 

Gardner a slip of paper on which appeared 
the following items: Raw fish, mushrooms, 
eggs, sake, Cherry Blossom, Peach Bud, Chrys- 
anthemum, Golden Plum and Thousand Joys 
— a combination that suggested gayety. As 
both our houses had been quiet the night 
before, we did not understand. Okashi San 
explained, however. Some dear friends were 
leaving Etchiu for a long journey, and he had 
been "saying goodby." As he had no money, 
he brought the bill to us. He had had a jolly 
time, and was sorry we had not been with 
him. He would have asked us, but his friends, 
being strangers, might have been unamusing. 

Under the circumstances Gardner had noth- 
ing to do but go into his sleeve for the amount 
of the bill. In the evening, when he had re- 
covered somewhat, he made remarks about 
hugeous nerve. 

We had laid aside ouryofuku in Etchiu and 
had put on the Japanese dress and adopted 
the native manner of living in everything else 
as well. We gave a large part of our foreign 
clothes to Okashi San and to his son Kojiki. 
They took the suits to the tailor's and had them 
cut down to fit. Kojiki San took advantage of 
his chance to give orders to a shitateya and had 
27 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

made for himself a neat cutaway coat, with a 
waistcoat to match. We hardly knew him 
when he presented himself in his new attire 
and handed us the bill for all the tailoring. He 
said he would like some new patent leather 
boots, too, but the shitateya could not make 
them. We allowed him to wait for the boots. 

Gardner went to Niigata once to see some 
naval friends, and while he was there I ran 
out of funds and wired him for $60. He and 
a friend each sent $30. It so happened I was 
called over the mountains before the reply 
came and was gone three days on business 
connected with the Government schools. 

When I returned I heard singing from afar, 
and on going into the house I found Okashi 
on his back in some ashes near an American 
stove we had set up in one of the school 
rooms. His legs and arms were in the air and 
he was singing a Japanese song of Gardner's 
composition. *'Doitashi mashiti abunaio is- 
sakijitsu go men na sai," etc. Noisy, but al- 
together meaningless. When he saw me he 
jumped up and did an old samurai war dance, 
explaining the while that the $60 had come 
all right and that he had taken my seal and 
got the money from the telegraph office. 
28 



MUKASHI lYEMUSHI. 

He had not eaten anything, he said, for 
three days; but sake! — ah! ha! And he show- 
ed a snow-white tongue. Then he untwisted 
his obe and handed me forty cents, all that 
remained of the money Gardner and his friend 
had wired. He said he had paid many bills 
and had enjoyed himself. We never learned 
exactly where the money went to, but we had 
suspicions. 

When Gardner decided to resign his pro- 
fessorship and to leave Japan there was great 
sorrow in Etchiu. The great folk of the pro- 
vince visited the house and brought him tes- 
timonials and gifts. Together these presents 
made a beautiful collection. About half an 
hour before Gardner's jinrikisha was to start 
Kintaro Okashi San came over with a glorious 
red bowl, which he gave with many protesta- 
tions of undying regard. Then he **borrow- 
ed" fifteen dollars. 



FURO OKE. 



FURO OKE. 

Gardner made a study of baths while he 
was in Japan. What he did not know about 
them when he left was exactly enough to make 
a native bathing suit. It is odd, too, that he 
should have taken to the f uro oke so enthusi- 
astically when one recalls his first experience 
in a Tokio bath tub. 

This is what he told some globe trotters at 
the Yokohama United Club one day. They 
were asking for points on ''doing" Japan. 

*♦! had just run up to Tokio to see a man in 
the Imperial University," he explained. *'He 
wasn't at home, but a young student who was 
taking care of his place greeted me most hos- 
pitably. He said: *0h, you have a letter to 
the Professor, and are just from America. I 
am a thousand times sorry that he is not at 
home. But come in, anyway. I shall do all 
I can to explain Japan to you.* 

<'He made a noble beginning, I assure you. 
He taught me chopsticks so well that I was 
33 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

expert in half an hour. Then he fed me with 
seaweed and raw fish. I'll tell you about that 
later. And finally he boiled me. 

*'It is the custom here, you know, to bathe 
every afternoon. His bathtub was out on the 
lawn. It is an oval arrangement, about as 
high as it is long, and a foot longer than it 
is wide. In one end there is a stovepipe 
running down through the bottom and com- 
ing up just even with the rim of the tub. At 
the lower end of the pipe is a grate that holds 
a charcoal fire which heats the water. The 
idea is to get in the tub when the water is 
warmed and sit there while the temperature 
gradually rises. It's a great scheme, as I 
found out afterward. 

"The Japanese can stand it until the ther- 
mometer shows 125 to 128 degrees. So can 
I, now, after I've been at it a year, but it*s 
something to be worked up to gradually. The 
first time you try a Japanese bath 95 degree.-? 
will do much better. 

"Well, as there was no one but this student 
in sight, I went out on the lawn and got in the 
tub. It was fine. The blue sky overhead and 
the wide, wide world around me. 'This is 
just my size,' I said. *I shall apply for nat- 
34 



FURO OKE. 

uralization papers to-morrow and settle down 
for the rest of my life in Japan. It's good 
enough for me.' And so I sat there, thinking 
of what I would do and the fun I'd have. 

"But while I was musing the fire burned. I 
didn't notice it at first; not until I observed 
something else. That was that this young 
student's wife and her maid had come out 
while I was in my tub and were busy washing 
rice by the well, not far away. 'That's er — 
something, I said.' 'Why didn't that blooming 
rat tell them that I was out here in the tub ? 
I'd wring his neck if I could get at him.' 

" 'They'll be gone soon, I suppose,' I said to 
myself. But I was hot. So was the water, 
and it got hotter. 'They're not in a hurry with 
that rice,' I said. 'Confound a country where 
it takes them all day to wash rice.' I raved 
and swore — inwardly, of course — but it did 
no good. It didn't cool the water or me a bit. 

"That water behaved badly. It didn't warm 
up gradually to the boiling point, thereby al- 
lowing me to simmer into mock missionary 
broth. It 'het' itself up by jerks. It would 
simmer gently, then drop about two degrees, 
just enough to fool me into the idea that the 
fire was going out, and that I should be com- 
3S 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

fortable. Then it would buck up six points, 
and Fd have a touch of Hades. 

"Still they washed that rice. If I could have 
yelled Fd have felt better, but I didn't dare. I 
was afraid they'd see me. I tried to sneak, 
but just as Fd be half way out one of them 
would look around or look as if she was go- 
ing to look around, and down Fd duck. Every 
time I dropped I felt my hide peel off, just as 
in the stories they used to tell of fellows being 
skinned alive out West by Injuns. 

"All the water was too hot, but at ilie sur- 
face it felt like a red-hot ring bound to my 
body. I tried to stir it up to equalize the heat, 
but motion was painful. I felt as if I couldn't 
move. I didn't have enough resolution. You 
see, I was nearly done. So I braced my feet 
against the little partition that serves as a fen- 
der to the iron pipe and tried to endure it. The 
water grew hotter,and I braced harder, until 
there was a crack and a splash. The fender 
gave way, and my foot went plumb against 
that sizzling pipe. 

"It was just then that I forgot all about the 

clothes I didn't have on. I also forgot about 

the rice washers, and that they could see me. 

I forgot everything, in fact, except that I was 

36 



FURO OKE. 

boiled almost to death. As I jumped I slip- 
ped backward on the edge of the tub, rolled 
around on the back of my neck exactly one 
minute by the clock, then rushed into the 
house just in time to meet two American 
missionary ladies who, like me, had called, 
not knowing that the professor was out of 
town. 

"They didn't seem to be shocked. I had sense 
enough left to notice that, but I was awfully 
embarrassed." 

"Now if you fellows want to get at the real 
Japan — natural Japan, be sure and take 
plenty of baths while here," continued Gard- 
ner. The bath is the best point of view from 
which to study human nature that you can 
find. Don't listen to what any one tells you 
in the treaty ports; not, at least, until you have 
made a tour of the country and have taken at 
least 1 ,000 baths. Then, if you like, you may 
let the Kobeites and the Yokohamaites and 
the Nagasakites tell you all they know, and 
you will be able to separate the chaff from the 
grain. 

"Some of the foreign residents can give you 
many points, but the majority will fill you up 
with misinformation. Wait till you've had 
2>1 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

your baths before you listen. Japan, as seen 
from the bathtub, is the real Japan, and Henry 
Norman will admit there's something in that. 
If you don't know enough to write a book 
when you come back it will be because you 
were struck blind early in the visit. You'll 
have chances for your camera, too, and you 
must work your sketch book for all it's worth. 
Take notes and come back ripe for fame! 

*'It is remarkable that no one has yet *writ- 
ten up' Japan from the bathtub side. Even 
Lafcadio Hearn, who is more sympathetic 
than any one else so far, among the men who 
write, pays small attention to the tub. Basil 
Hall Chamberlain, who is wonderfully well 
posted on the history of the country, says the 
Japanese possess only two things they haven't 
borrowed from other countries. The first is 
their poetry and the second is their hot baths. 

"It hardly would be worth your while to go 
in for the poetry to any extent. It would take 
you five years to learn to read it, and twice as 
long to learn to compose it yourself. But 
with hot baths it is different. You can learn 
to take them in a few weeks, if you will profit 
bymy experience anddo not begin too hard and 
are not shy. As I said before, your native friends 
38 



FURO OKE. 

are likely to be in water at 115 degrees to 120 
degrees, that would take the hide right off a 
beginner. I got so tough after a few months' 
practice that I could sit still in water at 125 de- 
grees. I couldn't move round of course, and 
I had to be mighty slow getting in and out, 
but I could stand the heat even on my face. 

**If I were you I'd get a student from the 
university to act as guide. They are fairly 
trustworthy and good company. Don't have 
anything to do with the professional guides at 
the treaty ports. They'll pull your leg. When 
youVe found a student that speaks English 
well, and most of them do, though in an 
amusingly formal way, start off for the West 
Coast. Travel the unfrequented routes as 
much as possible, that is, routes that for- 
eigners do not take. You can find hun- 
dreds of charming places that few foreigners 
have seen. And in many of these places there 
are hot springs and mineral baths. 

*'Take *em all and watch the people about 
you. You'll see every one in the neighbor- 
hood every day— villagers and the visitors 
alike, men and women, young and old, large 
and small, every morning and evening. All 
come into the village square, disrobe and let 
39 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

themselves down gently into the huge tank of 
running water. 

**Then the news of the day and the gossip 
of the neighborhood are discussed from every 
viewpoint. Listen hard and have your guide 
mix up in the talk as much as possible. Get 
him to repeat to you all that he remembers 
after the bath is over. Don't talk to him in 
the bath, or the neighbors will crowd around 
to hear the queer sounds you make. They 
will quit talking of their own doings, which 
are what you wish to become familiar with, 
and will talk about your skin and hair and 
eyes, how large you are and all that sort of 
thing. 

*'So keep your mouth shut while you're in 
the bath and use your eyes and ears. When 
you go back to your hotel you can have a les- 
son in Japanese from your guide, and inci- 
dentally teach him a little English, which is 
what he's really after. 

"One reason why these baths are good 
places to study native life is that they are the 
only places where the sexes come together 
for general conversation. Men and women 
have bathed together naked in Japan from 
time immemorial. The Government says 
40 



FURO OKE. 

that the presence of women keeps the men 
from talking politics too much, and though 
missionaries say that the custom is shocking, 
the Government does not interfere. *We have 
been bathing this way for 2,000 years without 
scandal, why should we change ?' the na- 
tives say; * there is no evil in the custom to 
those whose minds are free from evil.* So 
they ignored the pleadings of the *sky pilots,* 
and the children of Japan continue bathing in 
just the sort of suits they wore when they 
were born." 



KASO. 



KASO. 



"Speaking of feasts and funerals," said 
Gardner to some griffins he had up to tiffin 
one day, '' I saw an old man roasting while 
his family sat around eating and drinking and 
making merry. It was over on the west 
coast, where Buddhism is strong." 

*♦ It was a strange sight to me," he contin- 
ued, ** for I had not been in the country long, 
and did not know anything about the native 
funeral customs. The old man who was burn- 
ing had been my neighbor. He was " inkio" 
— that is, retired from active life. His eldest 
son was my landlord. The old man's friend- 
ship had won me the good will of his house- 
hold. That is how I happened to be at the 
funeral. 

" He was 88 years old. This is the lucky 
age in Japan, because of the way the number 
is written." Then Gardner made marks with 
his chopsticks dipped in shoyu on the top of 
his tray, two little dabs pointing at each other 
45 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

for 8, then below a cross for lo, and below 
this two more little dabs. The column then 
read 8, lo, 8 or 88. Now if the four dabs 
were brought close up and down to the cross 
in the middle the 88 would change into the 
character rice. 

Rice is the Japanese synonym for plenty, 
so the man or woman reaching the age of 
88 is held in particular esteem, and my friend's 
funeral was more elaborate than the usual 
affair because of his lucky age. 

"Crovv^ds came to the house, for everybody 
that knew anybody knew Takaiyanagi Inkiyo. 
They came in and bowed before the house- 
hold shrine, where his name and the age of 
such good omen were inscribed. As they 
bowed they pressed their hands together as 
Christians do in prayer. They reverenced his 
spirit, and by their obeisance they implied 
that they held his memory in as high esteem 
as they had held him when he was a living 
man. 

"Then they laid their offerings on the floor 
below the little image in its gilded case. Ev- 
ery one brought something. The well-to-do 
gave money, others cakes, or wine, and others 
bamboo vases full of red or white flowers. 
46 



KASO. 

"Meanwhile, the good wife of the house was 
busy in the kitchen preparing food for the 
guests. In neighboring kitchens, too, the wom- 
en helped with this. In my house cooking be- 
gan early in the morning and the maids kept 
at it all day long. When the cooking was over 
there was more food than I ever saw before; 
raw fish, sugared fish, cuttle fish, seaweed 
soups and cold boiled rice rolled up in sea- 
weed with a dab of horseradish in the centre. 

The feasting lasted till noon next day, when 
it was time to go to the temple. 

The old man's body the priests saw put into 
a jar shaped like a huge flower-pot, with fra- 
grant leaves pressed in round about it. When 
all was ready for the procession the mourners 
put the jar in a box covered with a w^hite 
cloth. White is the mourning color in 
Japan, and some white robed attendants from 
the temple carried it off on a stretcher on 
their shoulders. 

"Just ahead of the jar walked a company of 
singers with bells. They were in white also. 
In fact, we were all white, except the old man's 
son, my landlord. He had on a wonderful 
dress suit made after the foreign pattern^ 
much too large for him and lined with pink 
47 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

silk. The trousers were rolled up about a 
foot on each leg and fitted as though they 
were on 'hind side first.* 

♦•His hat was odd, too. It was of the good 
old stovepipe design, running straight up at 
the sides with a broad flat brim. 

It was fortunate for my friend that he had 
ears, or his hat would have reached down to 
his shoulders. He had a homeless appear- 
ance in this outfit, that was almost as distress- 
ing as it was amusing. 

"I was in the procession, of course. I wore 
a white duck suit and rode in a jinrikisha. At 
the temple the bearers put the jar on an altar, 
and a dozen priests chanted a service. As the 
chanting went on each guest stepped for- 
ward in turn, and after bowing to the priests 
knelt before the bier and salaaming, took a 
pinch of powdered incense from a bowl and 
dropped it into a charcoal brazier, in which a 
tiny fire burned. Then with another pro- 
longed salaam the mourning guest returned 
to his seat. This was a sort of 'goodby' to 
the body and a salutation to the spirit of the 
ancient gentleman. 

"When my turn came, I put my fingers ab- 
sent mindedly, into the brazier and burned 

48 



KASO. 

them, and then in confusion put too much 
incense on the fire, which made such a smoke 
that the priests and I had a coughing fit. 
Afterward I explained that we always did that 
way at home. We burned our fingers a little 
to purify them, and the last man always dump- 
ed on all the incense that was left so that the 
corpse wouldn't think that we weren't gener- 
ous. Since then I have been regarded in 
Etchiu as one learned in holy things. 

•'After this ceremony and the sneezing was 
over we took the dead man to a crematory, 
the only kind of Japanese building that has a 
chimney. 

**Fire was under this oven and the younger 
priests were setting a banquet more elaborate 
if possible than what had been served in the 
house, with sake in shallow drinking cups of 
red laquer. We seated ourselves on small 
cushions laid on the mats. I sat like the others 
on my heels. My landlord protested. *You 
are a foreigner,' said he, 'and are doing me 
such an overwhelming honor by coming here 
to-day that I cannot reconcile myself to the 
idea of your placing your august body in a 
position so uncomfortable. We are used to 
it, Augustly condescend to act in accordance 

49 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

with the request which I have had the gross 
effrontery to make?* I persisted however in 
sitting native fashion and had cramps in each 
leg afterwards, much to the amusement of the 
other guests. 

*'The priests took the body from the jar, 
and, having wrapped it carefully in white, 
they put it on an iron grating and slid it far 
back into the furnace, yet where all could get 
a good view of it. The flames curled round 
it fiercely at first and then almost tenderly, as 
though caressing it. Once in a while they 
would lash furiously and tie themselves in 
fantastic knots about the limbs which bent 
and unbent and quivered, as though life were 
not yet extinct and they could feel the terrible 
heat. 

*'And while the venerable departed writhed 
and roasted in the flames we banquetted. It 
was grewsome. Now and then one of the 
old man's progeny would go to the oven and 
turn him over with an iron rod to *do' him 
better on the other side, or would straighten 
him out so that the fire could get at him bet- 
ter. 

"I had always been in favor of crema- 
tion, but I'll be hanged if I liked sitting there 
50 



KASO. 

watching a man kink up and splutter while 
his relatives turned him like a carcass on the 
spit. 

"I had recourse to the sake to steady my 
nerves. Sake is about the strength of sherry, 
so that if you drink enough of it, especially 
hot sake, you will produce an effect. I pro- 
duced one in the crematory. Every time any 
one offered me a cup I took it and poured 
the contents into me. It is the custom to ex- 
change cups, you know. You rinse your cup 
and offer it to whomever you wish. You 
must offer it once at least to every one pres- 
ent, and you always receive a cup in return. 
There were twenty-nine of us at the funeral, 
I had two drinks with each one of them! 

**I told my host that when my time came 
he must see that I was properly cremated. 
He replied that it would be too great an honor 
for him. *You had much better come to cook 
me,* he said. Finally we decided that which- 
ever went over first the other should burn 
him and that the town should have sake 
enough to swim in. We agreed, however, 
not to die before we were 88. 

** -Just see how beautifully my father burns,' 
my landlord said, because of his lucky age.* 
51 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

** *Wait till you see me sizzle,' I replied, 
You wil be amazed. I intend to go off like 
a keg of powder.*" 



JUNSA. 



JUNSA. 

The Japanese **cop" is a gentleman by 
birth, a model of courteous dignity and a 
good fighter, in consideration of which the 
Government gives him six yen a month, or 
about three dollars. He comes from the 
highest of the social grades — the samurai — 
and until 1871 was a military retainer of a 
daimyo, as the feudal lords were called who 
ruled over the provinces of Japan. He was 
born to the use of the sword, and even now, 
except in treaty ports, it is his weapon of de- 
fense and badge of office, though it is rare that 
he is compelled to use it. 

Samurai, according to Basil H. Chamberlain, 
is best translated "military class," "warriors" 
or "gentry." Recently the Chinese word 
"shizoku," of precisely the same meaning, is 
in vogue. The samurai lived in the daimyo's 
castle, and received annually an allowance of 
so many koku of rice, according to his im- 
portance and the richness of the province. A 
55 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

koku is a little over five bushels. Japanese 
still reckon incomes in koku. 

The samurai's business was to be a gentle- 
man. In old Japan all gentlemen must be 
soldiers and all soldiers gentlemen. To-day 
it would not be quite wrong to say policeman. 
The samurai attended his daimyo on all oc- 
casions and fought for him whenever there 
was trouble with another daimyo. He was the 
embodiment of loyalty, and would give his 
life deliberately to revenge an insult to his 
lord. 

Mitford's '*Tale of the Forty-seven Ronins" 
shows how he could do this. The ronins 
were samurai without a master. In Mitford's 
story, which relates a fact of Japanese history, 
they carried out a scheme of vengeance re- 
quiring months of preparation, knowing all 
the while that, whether they failed or succeed- 
ed, the Shogun would sentence them to ''hara- 
kiri." 

So to-day the samurai, with all the instincts 
of ancient chivalry and three dollars a month 
salary, promenades the highways and byways 
of Dai Nippon, armed with a sabre and a ball 
of twine and preserves order the like of which 
no other country in the world maintains. The 
S6 



JUNSA. 

sabre is in lieu of a policeman's "billy," and 
the twine instead of handcuffs. 

It is interesting to watch the "cop" as he 
deftly weaves a net about his captive until he 
looks as though he were wrapped up in a 
hammock. This weaving has an esoteric 
significance, doubtless, as no need of doing 
it is manifest. Etiquette in Japan is against a 
captive's trying to escape after he has been 
informed courteously that he is under arrest, 
and must accompany his captor to the police 
station. 

The policeman always says, "Go men nasai" 
— "August pardon deign" — and the culprit, as 
he stands patiently to be woven in, replies, 
"Do itashi mashite" — "Oh don't mention it." 
When the weaving is over the "cop" has the 
culprit on a string, and, holding one end 
thereof, escorts him to the station, where the 
captor salutes his chief in military style and 
the captive bows low and declares he is mor- 
tified to be the cause of so much trouble. 
Both ends of the string are heard from, and 
the chief then decides whether to fine or to 
dismiss or to hold the offender for further 
examination. 

The policeman wears a military uniform — 
57 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

white in summer and blue in winter. He al- 
ways salutes when a foreigner speaks to him, 
and will walk a half-mile with one to show 
him his way. He will not accept a tip. His 
instincts and the rules of the Police Depart- 
ment forbid; and then besides, there is the 
Government pay — three dollars a month, on 
which he feeds and clothes his family. 

He will take charge of a foreigner in search 
of an hotel and escort him to the best lodg- 
ings to be had, and he will caution mine host 
against overcharging the guest. In the month- 
ly bazaars that are held in the streets leading 
to various temples in Tokio, the **cop" is ever 
watchful lest the dealers ask too much for 
their wares. So vigilant is he that the stranger 
often gets a better bargain than the native. 

One of them, through clever detective work, 
secured over one thousand yen that a native 
had stolen from an American and refused the 
gift of money that gratitude prompted. After 
much persuasion, however, he accepted a 
kimono, after the American had received 
special permission from the Police Depart- 
ment to make the present. 

In Yokohama and other treaty ports the 
policeman does not carry a sabre, but is armed 

58 



JUNSA. 

with a "billy," as are policemen in the United 
States. He is as dextrous in the use of this 
as he is with the sabre. Professor Norman, 
late of the Imperial Naval College of Japan, 
who has studied fencing of all sorts in Eng- 
land, France, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Per- 
sia, Siam, China and Ninpon says that the 
Japanese policeman is the most dextrous 
swordsman living. 

Even with his club he will enter a Yoko- 
hama drinking place where a half-dozen men- 
o'-war*s men are having a rough-and-tumble 
fight and "pinch the bunch" with celerity and 
ease. Jack has a wholesome dread of the 
little man in blue, and trembles when he sees 
the "billy." It is an odd sight to see him stag- 
gering to the station house in charge of a man 
whom it would seem he could pack under his 
arm. It is like an ant taking home a beetle. 

The entire police force in Japan is under 
a single head, with the chief offices in Tokio 
and a sub-department in each province. 

The chief is a man of extraordinary powers. 
His officers command such respect as only 
military men enjoy in Europe, and the entire 
system is as efficient, probably, as can be 
found in the world to-day. 

59 



CHO KIMI MAKE, HAN BOKU KACHI. 



CHO KIMI MAKE, HAN BOKU KACHI. 



Japanese are loyal, brave, courteous and 
hospitable, but fair play as Americans and 
English understand it does not appeal to them. 
This lack of perception shows itself in many 
places — in the law court, in commercial trans- 
actions, and even in athletic sports. As a class 
Japanese merchants have hardly more than a 
vestige of commercial integrity. The foreign 
merchants in Yokohama, Kobe and Nagasaki 
will allow them none whatever, and when he 
holds forth on native business ways his lan- 
guage is more vigorous than polite. 

He cites instances of bad faith on the part 
of Japanese he has had dealings with that jus- 
tify him in his opinion, and show that native 
tradesmen in the Mikado's Empire are as ir- 
responsible as children. This is not strange, 
however, when one looks into the social con- 
ditions that have maintained in Japan from 
time immemorial down to the edict of 1 87 1 , by 
which the government abolished castes. Until 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

this edict took effect merchants were at the 
foot of the ladder; above them were the farm- 
ers; above the farmers the craftsmen, the 
creators of the exquisite art of Japan; and then 
higher yet the Samurai, the military retainers 
of the daimiyos, or fudal lords who ruled the 
provinces until the Shogun resigned and the 
Mikado came out of his retirement in Kioto 
and established himself in Tokio. In the 
presence of a Samurai a merchant could not 
call his life his own. He had only his wit or 
cunning to depend upon. He had no redress 
whatever against anything the man of war 
might do. The Samurai might cut him in 
two; there would be one less merchant for 
the next census to report. The law would not 
call a member of the military class to account 
for merely trying his sword, and anyway, mer- 
chants should be patient and respectful. So 
it was that society had denied honor to 
trade folk for so long a time that the sense of 
fairness, if it ever existed in their minds, had 
atrophied. 

One might as well expect a youngster four 
years old to realize the moral obligation of a 
promise as to expect a native Japanese mer- 
chant to do as he has agreed to do merely for 
64 



CHO KIMI MAKE, HAN BOKU KACHI. 

the sake of keeping his word. His mind 
changes as the child's mind — as bUthely and as 
unreasonably. This is a Japanese trait, and 
discovers itself in all classes of society. For 
instance, the spokesman of a class in the Dai 
Gakko, the imperial university of Japan, which 
had entered upon the study of American his- 
tory with ardor, addressed the professor after 
the third lesson: * 'Please, Honorable Master, 
we wish not to peruse the grand American 
history further; we would rejoice, instead, to 
read how balloons are made." 

So the merchant who has ordered a thou- 
sand bolts of flannel at the agency of some 
foreign house is likely to appear a few days 
later, after a chance meeting with a friend 
and a little chat on *' business," to say he 
does not care for flannel, but thinks he will 
have a dozen cows to start a health farm with. 
On the morrow he may have changed again 
and be eager for Waterbury watches or **mus- 
tache-producing elixir." Should the agent 
say it was too late to change, as he had or- 
dered the flannel, the gentle native would say, 
•*0 kino doku sama," — August sorry, mister 
r, freely translated, *'the joke is on you." 

The agent, if he is a griffin, may explain 
65 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

that, having ordered the goods, it would be 
dishonorable to withdraw. "That, augustly 
is honorably existing truth," replies the de- 
ferential little Jap, "but I do not wish flannel. 
I would have cows and Waterbury watches 
and elixir." 

"But you should have warned me earlier," 
says the griffin. "The order has been cabled 
already. I cannot change it now. The goods 
are on the way." 

*-So augustly, probably, honorably it may 
be," observes the native, bowing low. 

"If you do not accept the goods I shall be 
embarrassed," continues the agent. 

"Saio de gozaimasho," observes the native, 
as before. 

* And I trust you will honor your order,' 
continues the griffin. 

"That is quite impossible, as I have chang- 
ed my mind," and with another profound 
salaam the little one smiles cheerfully and 
withdraws, leaving the agent wrapped in a 
realizing sense of that most frequent of all 
Japanese expressions, "Shikata ga nai," which 
means, literally, "doing-way is not;" or, as the 
Yankee hath it, "It is no use kicking." 

So, in the early days of Japan's trade with 
66 



CHO KIMI MAKE, HAN BOKU KACHL 

foreign countries the agents in the treaty 
ports were badly used, and the *'godowns" 
accumulated stuffs from all parts of the world 
that had been ordered from abroad in good 
faith, but which the native merchants would 
not accept on arrival, as their minds had 
changed. Even if the native signed a con- 
tract and affixed his signature, it made no dif- 
ference. He did not look upon himself as 
bound in any way to take what he did not 
care for. "How odd to insist when I no 
longer wish the stuff," he would say. "These 
barbarians are strange folk. They would really 
inconvenience me." 

Thus a contract came to mean in the for- 
eign eye nothing more than a memorandum 
to be ignored, unless a cash deposit went with 
it as a guarantee. This cash deposit is not 
an absolute safeguard against bad faith, how- 
ever, because of the competition among the 
foreign agencies. The Japanese merchants 
have been cunning enough to take advantage 
of this competition, and by going from one 
agent to another, are able sometimes to work 
the cash guarantee well down toward the 
vanishing point. 

Thev themselves are not so hampered, for 

67 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

they belong to one and the same guild. 
Competition is nil, for they work in harmony. 
But the foreign merchants, representing many 
different nationalities, have so far been quite 
unable to unite or to agree on any method 
of concerted action for mutual protection. 
Time and again the Europeans have tried, 
but the North and South of Europe do not 
trust each other, and there has been bad faith 
after each attempt to organize. 

The Japan Daily Mail is strongly pro-Japan- 
ese, but often it has had occasion to scold the 
natives on their lack of honest business 
methods. One merchant, a gentleman of 
wide experience and culture, writing to the 
Mail, declared that in twenty-five years' deal- 
ing with the Japanese he had not found one 
native merchant trustworthy. Indeed, only one 
native in all Japan had foreign credit, and this 
distinguished exception owned a bank in 
Paris, which gave him financial standing in 
European markets. 

There are two large stock companies en- 
tirely in the hands of Japanese in Osaka 
whose purchasing agents are trusted to some 
extent, because foreigners believe these buy- 
ers are not personally interested in the orders 
68 



CHO KIMI MAKE, HAN BOKU KACHI. 

they give; but even these men will bear watch- 
ing. 

All the stock companies are formed under 
the direction of an advisory board, and would 
appear in many cases to be devised for the 
bleeding of the stockholders. The boards of 
directors have had complete control and have 
managed the business to their own advantage. 

One lager beer brewery company, for in- 
stance, which sells beer throughout the em- 
pire, doing an enormous business, has not 
paid dividends, because the profits were eaten 
up in buying bottles. Bottles are still beyond 
the making of the glassworks of Japan, so the 
directors bought supplies abroad and sold 
them to the company at the modest advance 
of six hundred per cent. 

Another lot of directors, who were the 
dummies of one of Tokio's millionaires, put 
up a factory under American supervision and 
fitted it with elaborate machinery for making 
hats. The machinery, bought in 'England, 
was charged to the company at ;£ 5 los. to each 
£i spent. The Englishman and American 
engaged to oversee the work were to receive 
a certain percentage of the dividends in part 
payment of salary. 

69 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

The hat business was dull on account of 
low duties on manufactured hats and a gen- 
eral disinclination on the part of natives to 
wear anything closer to the head than an 
umbrella. (Hats are not indigenous to Japan, 
the Japanese word for hat is *'shappo," from 
the French ''chapeau," and has the same pro- 
nunciation.) Prospects for dividends were 
not encouraging, but the directors were in- 
structed to make profits somehow. Only they 
themselves know what they did; but the fac- 
tory burned down one night, and the next day 
they gave a grand picnic to all employes. 

They distributed tons of rice and sake 
broadcast, and all that part of the imperial 
city celebrated in honor of "Tokio no hana.*' 
Then the directors ordered new machinery 
from London, charged it to the company at 
the rate of seven to one, and held it in Yoko- 
hama until the stockholders paid up even to 
the last mo. A mo^.oooi Mexican. 

After that they made money on the fur and 
wool they sold to the company, bothering 
themselves not at all about the stockholders, 
and the foreigners, seeing no dividends forth- 
coming, resigned and returned to their re- 
spective countries. 

70 



CHO KIMI MAKE, HAN BOKU KACHL 

Japanese courts recognize the lack of busi- 
ness sense and training on the part of those 
who appear before them and deal paternally 
with the contestants. The interested parties 
go over the contracts and agreements care- 
fully and fully explain everything to the best 
of their ability. Then the Court investigates 
the conditions under which the contract would 
be carried out if the contractor should go on 
with his work. 

If he finds no obstacles in the way of ful- 
filling the contract he decides against the 
contractor; but if he finds the contractor had 
miscalculated and would lose money were 
he to go on, the Court decides in his favor, as 
manifestly it would be a hardship to force a 
man to work without profit. The Court com- 
miserates with the man that let the contract 
and says, ''Oki no doku sama," but it also adds, 
"Shikata ga ni." So the man must make a 
new contract and be more considerate of the 
contractor if he would have the work done. 

All this is in great contrast to the methods 
of the Chinese whom the Japanese despise. 

The traveler in Japan will notice many 
Chinese holding positions of trust in the for- 
eign business houses, but seldom will he find 
71 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

a native so employed. In the banks, for in- 
stance, the "shraff," — the man who counts the 
money — is almost invariably a Chinese. So 
are the "compadores," who have charge of 
the "godowns," or warehouses. The China- 
man stands high in the estimation of the for- 
eign merchant. His spoken word is taken 
without question even where tens of thou- 
sands of dollars are involved, when the most 
explicit contract in writing, signed and stamp- 
ed with the Japanese merchant's seal, would 
be valueless, except as a memorandum. 

This is because the Chinese has a concep- 
tion of fairness that the Japanese has not. The 
Chinese merchant realizes the value of credit. 
His credit is his ''face," and he will sacrifice 
everything to ''save his ^face." He believes 
that a bargain is fair when it is fair to both 
parties, and he believes that promises must 
be kept. He does not *'put up bad money 
against good." 

One of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank- 
ing Corporation's managers said: "From my 
personal experience I believe the Chinese 
bankers and merchants are the most trust- 
worthy folk in the world. Our bank in Shang- 
hai, for instance, has done a business with 
72 



CHO KIMI MAKE, HAN BOKU KACHL 

the Chinese in the past twenty-five years 
amounting probably to more than 400,000,000 
taels [$320,000,000], and we have not met a 
Chinese defaulter yet." 

Agreements between Japanese do not hold 
unless part of the sum indicated in the papers 
has been paid. The contract of itself is nothing. 

When it comes to sports fair play is again 
conspicuous by its absence. On Sumida Gawa, 
which flows through Tokio, there is an an- 
nual regatta with the coming of the cherry 
blossoms. For miles the north bank of the 
river is nearly hidden under rich pink clouds 
of **sakura no hana." There is not in the 
world a more beautiful sight, but the wrath 
of the defeated crews does not mollify thereby. 

They accuse their successful rivals of all 
baseness, calling them swine and reptiles. 
The coaches of winning crews are seldom in 
evidence on such occasions — at least, not in 
the vicinity of the crews they helped to de- 
feat. Mr. Salabelle of Yokohama, who had 
coached the crew of the Business College one 
year, was in danger of his life because his 
crew had learned something from him and 
had gone ahead of the other oarsmen. 

The Rev. Dr. Eby's experience at the Koto 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

Chu Gakko is another illustration of the Jap- 
anese attitude in sport. The learned doctor, 
who was then the head of a large mission 
school, had developed creditable baseball and 
cricket teams among his pupils. He went up 
from Tsukiji one afternoon to the college 
grounds to see and encourage his boys to 
go in and win. The Koto Chu Gakko students 
considered this highly improper, as it might 
lead to their defeat. Therefore, they laid for 
the reverend gentleman, and when he ap- 
peared on a path that led to a break in the 
low bamboo fence along the south side of the 
college grounds, they stabbed him. 

The college authorities did not move in the 
matter, nor did the doctor complain; but the 
foreigners, both in and out of missionary 
circles in Tokio and in Yokohama, raised 
such a protest that something had to be done. 
The students responsible for the act were 
ordered to apologize, and on their doing so 
Dr. Eby said he was quite satisfied. 

The college professor's comment was that 
as long as the doctor hod got the worst of it 
he should rest content. The students said he 
had no grounds for complaint, as, instead of 
going around to the college gate (a distance 
74 



CHO KIMI MAKE, HAN BOKU KACHI. 

of half a mile), he had been guilty of such a 
breach of etiquette as to climb the fence. 
Inasmuch as the fence at that point was 
broken and a well-beaten path in daily use 
by the students ran through this break, the 
foreign population would not be persuaded 
that the breach of etiquette demanded blood. 

For years the president of one of the clubs 
in Tokio prohibited playing games for money 
in the clubrooms. He had enforced the rule 
with the utmost strictness and to the entire 
satisfaction of the foreign members. The 
purpose of the club was to bring the natives 
and foreigners into closer relations. Its presi- 
dent must be of the imperial family. All 
the nobles of the empire belong, all the di- 
plomatic corps and well-nigh all foreign resi- 
dents of any claim to social consideration. 

In the early days, before foreigners knew 
the gentle native nature, the great American 
game was tolerated in the clubrooms. Not 
for long, however, for it was discovered that 
while the Japanese enjoyed winning immense- 
ly they took it badly when they lost and were 
wonderfully slow on settling days. They were 
hard losers, though the cheerfullest sort of 
winners. A debt of "honor" had no signifi- 
IS 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

cance in their eyes. What had honor to do 
with cards? Honor is a * 'sword-word"; and 
anyway why should a man pay? It was much 
jollier to be paid; better to receive than to give 
as the Japanese scripture hath it. Soon no 
foreigner could be found who would have 
anything to do with a native in a game of 
chance, and presently a rule was voted 
unanimously at the club prohibiting play for 
money altogether, for the native members 
were up to their knees in I. O. U's. 

In the tours of the wrestlers, who give won- 
derful exhibitions of their art in the chief 
towns of the empire, the referee has to take 
thought in his decisions lest he offend the 
audience. If he happens to be in Fukui, for 
instance, and in his company there is a Fukui 
wrestler, he must give this man all the best 
of the decisions or the populace will mob 
him. The man may be pushed out of the 
ring and thrown among the spectators; he 
may be all out of form and not able to wrestle 
a little bit; but the referee, if he would leave 
Fukui alive, must have a care and call the 
other wrestler down on fouls, no matter how 
fair he has been. Fukui demands that Fukui 
have the decision, and that settles it. 
76 



OYASUMl NASAL 



OYASUMI NASAL 



In japan you don't go to bed; the bed comes 
to you. It is much easier that way, and in 
Japan the easiest way is the only way. That 
is one reason why the country is so popular 
with globe trotters. Nor does it make much 
difference what part of your house you may 
be in, or of a friend's house for that matter, 
or a tea house or a hotel; if you are drowsy 
the bed will come in patty-pat, and be spread 
out before you at a moment's notice. 

If you are visiting, your host will detect 
your inclination, and beg you to honor his 
house by taking a nap therein. Clapping his 
hands, he calls out: *' Futon moto koi" — ''Quilts 
bring here." His wife is prostrate just out- 
side the room, barkening to the august com- 
mand. In two minutes she will be toddling 
in with a bundle in her arms much larger 
than herself, a huge, thickly wadded quilt, 
called a futon, which she rolls out over the 
tatami, the soft mattresses covered with finely 

79 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

woven bamboo that are upon all floors in 
Japanese rooms, excepting only the daidoku, 
or kitchen. That is the bed, and if you will 
condescend augustly to arrange your honor- 
able body on anything so unworthy, Okamusan 
(the sweet Httle wife) will be bewildered with 
the honor. 

She tells you so in a sweet voice as she 
kneels and presses her face down against the 
backs of her tiny hands on the tatami before 
you. You protest that the honor is with you; 
that it is indescribably rude in you to venture 
to think of polluting so magnificent a futon. 
Then with a low bow you stretch yourself out 
upon it. Okamusan covers you with another 
futon, and, doubling up again, lisps: "Oyasumi 
nasai" — "Condescend to enjoy honorable tran- 
quillity." 

Mine host says the weather impresses him 
as being such as to encourage nap-taking 
also, and soon he is on another futon lying 
peacefully beside you, to be called when the 
bath is ready, for probably it is afternoon 
when all Japan has a siesta, followed by a dip 
in the furo oke, or wooden bathtub, and a 
rubdown by a maid. 

Supposing you to be a foreigner who has 
80 



OYASUMI NASAL 

just arrived, and therefore a ^'griffin," in 
Yokohama slang, your first night in Japan is 
likely to be a new experience, especially if 
you are just from the ''States," and unfamiliar 
with the Far East. You should go to Tokio, 
the capital of the empire, only eighteen miles 
by rail from Yokohama, and put up at a na- 
tive inn, where the servants are not familiar 
with foreign ways, and will treat you quite 
like a Japanese. Do not take lodgings in 
Yokohama until you have been inland. It is 
a beautiful city on the Bay of Yedo with a 
charmingly hospitable community made up 
of folk from Europe and America but it is not 
real Japan. In Tokio the native inn will be a 
wonder and a delight. 

Of course you leave your shoes outside the 
door on entering, for the delicate texture of 
the bamboo matting, which is the upper sur- 
face of the tatami, would be torn by boot 
heels. If your feet are chilled you may wear 
heelless slippers, but the native way is the 
best. That is, to go barefoot — a good pre- 
ventive against colds and rheumatism, or 
you may wear tabi. Tabi are the native 
socks. They come just to the ankle around 
which they fasten with hooks. They are 
8l 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

shaped like a mitten, having a separate pocket 
for the great toe just as mittens have for the 
thumb. Tabi are convenient, because when 
wearing them your feet fit into the zori (san- 
dals), and geta, or wooden clogs, which the 
Japanese wear out of doors instead of shoes, 
and you may amble round as you please. The 
slit in the tabi between the great toe and the 
other toes is to admit the thong by which the 
geta and zori are held to the foot. When your 
shoes are on one of the shelves that stand 
where you would look for a hat rack in Amer- 
ica, a maid will take you directly to your room, 
along with your luggage, for there is no office 
in which to stop to register. 

There you will find little in the way of or- 
nament, and no furniture at all. If you like 
you may have some brought in. There may 
be a kakemono hanging in the alcove, and a 
gaku over one of the cross beams, which 
hold the upper slide of the karakimi, or slid- 
ing paper doors. The gaku is by some fam- 
ous chirographer, and bears his seal. Likely 
enough it is a maxim of Confucius. 

As there are no chairs, you will be glad 
that the Japanese floors are not like ours, and 
that the tatami are really soft. You will have 
83 



OYASUMI NASAL 

zabuton, or small square futon, to sit on. 
They are agreeable, but you will soon wonder 
what to do with your legs and feet, which 
you will discover can be very troublesome 
appendages. If only you could hang them 
over somewhere, even down a hole. But 
there is no suitable hole. If you wish a table 
to use in writing down your ''first impres- 
sions," after the manner of most griffins, the 
maid will bring you one a foot high, which 
you may grow used to writing upon if you 
persevere. If it is toward the end of the after- 
noon you should have a bath. You will find 
it amusing, refreshing and possibly embar- 
rassing. When the maid has scrubbed your 
back it will be time for ban meshi, or evening 
meal. You will find the chopsticks unexpect- 
edly easy to manage. Soon after this, as you 
are tired, you are ready for the bed to come 
to you. 

As you are not used to sleeping on the 
floor yet, even a soft one, you had better 
order "futon ni mai," or if you are tender, 
"sam mai." Ni means two and san or sam 
means three. Mai is an auxiliary numeral 
used when counting flat things. 

You clap your hands instead of pressing the 

83 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

button of an electric bell, and from far back 
in the interior of the house comes a drawn- 
out "hai-i-i-i, tadaima." "Hai" is only a signal 
cry meaning that the maid hears you. It does 
not mean yes. *'Tadaima," the dictionaries 
say, means now, just now, at present or pres- 
ently. In some tea houses, you will find it is 
the equivalent of the Spanish word manana. 
Tokio maids are quick, however, and in a 
moment the karakimi slide to one side and a 
little body is kneeling without, awaiting orders. 

You wish to be polite and say, "Neimui 
desukara ne. Futon motikute chodai; ni mai 
dozo." (As I am sleepy bring me futon. Two 
pieces, please.) "Hai, kashiko mari mashita" 
(august commands humbly are assented to), 
replies the bright-eyed maiden as she bends 
low. Then with a "go men nasai" (august 
pardon deign) she pushes the karakimi wide 
open, and calls out, "Ne san, chotto oide. 
Sensei ne masu desu yo." (Elder sister, come 
here a moment. Honorable master would 
sleep!) 

Elder sister, who, by the way, is as likely to 

be the younger of the two, comes along the 

veranda from the kitchen, her bare feet 

sounding patty-pat on the polished wood. She 

84 



OYASUMI NASAL 

goes to the wall and slides open the door of 
the fukuro dana, or cupboard, which you 
thought was the entrance to another room. 
There are the futon folded up on a horizontal 
shelf, which divides the cupboard so that it 
looks like the two berths of a stateroom on 
board ship. 

*'Ni mai desu ne, dana san?" she says. (You 
want two pieces, don't you, master?) And 
then with the sweetest little smile and her 
head a trifle to one side like a bird's, she asks: 
"Makura futatsu, desuka?" Makura is pillow, 
and she asks if you wish two. 

The futon are spread out one upon the 
other, and a sheet, perhaps, is laid on top. 
Sheets, however, are new to Japan. Then 
comes the big ue futon, or top futon, which 
is longer than the others, and has sleeves 
like a huge kimono. It would just fit a man 
ten feet high. This is bunched up at the 
foot of the bed ready to be pulled over you 
when you have laid down. 

The small object at the head of your bed, 
which looks like a cigar box on edge sup- 
mounted by a roll of paper, is the makura. 
No one need envy your first night's experience 
with it. You will discover that your head is 
8s 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 
as heavy as though it were solid lead, and, 
therefore — which is all the comfort you'll 
have out of it, for the discovering process is 
painful — that it cannot possibly be empty. You 
will likely dream of being beheaded or un- 
headed, and of falling over the brinks of 
precipice after precipice. In the morning 
your head will be stationary, for the hinges of 
your neck will be too rusty to turn even a 
little bit. It will take time to master the ma- 
kura, but you will like it when you are used 
to it. 

If you examine closely you will see that it 
is not a cigar box, but a truncated pyramid, 
five inches high, hollow, with a rectangular 
base and a groove on top, in which lies a 
slender cushion stuffed with bran. Upon 
this cushion ** ne san" binds a few layers of 
paper, which are changed every morning. 

There is a drawer at one end of the ma- 
kura, in which you will find tobacco, extreme- 
ly fine cut and of attenuated flavor. You 
may take ippuku — one puff — as the Japanese 
say, without nervous prostration. There may 
be one or two kiseru, or pipes, in the drawer. 
If not, surely there are on the tray beside the 
tabako ban, the square little rosewood box 
86 



OYASUMI NASAL 

with the earthenware hebachi, or brazier, in 
it, and the haifuki, as the bamboo tube is 
called, which is a combination of ash receiver 
and cuspidor. Bits of burning charcoal are 
in the hebachi for lighting your pipe. The 
haifuki is for ashes, burnt matches and the 
other uses of a cuspidor. If it is not too late 
in the season you will need a kaya, or mos- 
quito net. Ne san will have it unfolded and 
hung up by cords at its four corners in al- 
most no time. It is always green, and usually 
has red bindings. When you are inside you 
will be well shut off from the evening 
breezes as well as from the mosquitoes, and 
will not feel the need of the ue futon. 

You have watched the proceedings with 
amusement, and now that everything seems 
ready you wonder why the ** elder sisters" 
do not patter back to the kitchen. But all 
is not ready. They must take away the 
rosoku, or paper-wicked candles, or the ram- 
pu — as the Japanese pronounce lamp — and 
put the night lantern, the andon, in its place. 
This is a large, square, white paper affair, 
standing on a frame a couple of feet above 
the tatami, and lighted by a taper which juts 
out over the edge of a small saucer of oil of 

87 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

sesame within. While you are waiting and 
wondering they are doing the same thing. 
They will bring the night lamp as soon as 
you are safely under the kaya. **Why doesn't 
the honorable master undress.^" they are think- 
ing, and you, '*Why the deuce don't those 
maids go?" A Japanese friend explains to 
you, perhaps, and you get him between you 
and them, and, partially disrobing, slip under 
the kaya. Then he explains your trepidation 
to the ne san, and all three have a great laugh 
at your expense. 

Should you wish to go out to look at the 
moon or to study the weather probabilities 
for the morrow, or the asago, which is Jap- 
anese for morning glory, before retiring, ne 
san accompanies you and stands patiently 
by humming an old love tune. She has a 
dipper at the chosubachi, and will pour 
water for you to wash your hands and will 
offer you a brand new tenui after your ablu- 
tions on which to dry yourself. Ne san is not 
an imaginative person. She guides you as a 
matter of course, and takes good care of you. 
She sees you safely in bed, and, doubling 
up into a little bunch, she says most hum- 
bly: **Oyasumi nasai." Then sh-sh-sh-click. 



OYASUMI NASAL 

the karakimi are pushed togethv^r, and you 
are in bed in Japan. You'll rather like it 
after a month's experience. 

You will not find bedrooms in Japanese 
houses. But wherever you go you will find 
futon are plentiful, and wherever there is 
space for one there you may have a bed. The 
servants — men, women, boys and girls — sleep 
on the kitchen floor, or, more often, on the 
floor of the room opening into the kitchen, in 
a long row, depending on the size of the room 
and the number of servants. 

In a first-class tea house or hotel, if you 
look in early in the morning, you will find 
several rows of futon reaching quite across 
the main room, each with a head hanging out 
comfortably over the top of one of those hol- 
low wooden pillows. To the Japanese they 
are rather neck rests than head rests, but to 
the foreign mind the word rest is not applica- 
ble to makura. Except in the case of young 
children, no two people are on the same 
futon. 

Using futon and the floor instead of bed- 
steads is a great saving of house space, and 
convenient in many ways. The futon are 
easily aired, and may be carried about readily 

89 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

when moving. In case of fire they are quickly 
packed up and put out of the way. They are 
cheap, except those used by the rich, which 
are filled with pure silk wadding and covered 
with heavy silk. Even then they cost less 
than hair mattresses in America. 

As much of the exterior as well as of the 
interior walls of Japanese houses are sliding 
doors, which grow loose and wabbly with the 
changing of the seasons, from wet to dry and 
then to wet again, and with the shaking of the 
300 or 400 earthquakes that occur each year, 
there is no lack of chinks and crevices which, 
however admirable for ventilation, are 
rather too cooling in winter. It behooves you 
to have heat if you would be comfortable. 
The Japanese have neither furnaces nor 
stoves. They make no attempt to heat their 
houses, but they try to keep their toes and 
fingers warm by means of a kotatsu — that is, 
a square hibachi sunk in the floor, with a 
wooden frame above for supporting the futon 
that are laid over it out of danger of their 
burning. In winter the beds are arranged 
round the kotatsu, and consequently for the 
first half the night your feet are in an oven, 
but as morning approaches and the charcoal 
90 



OYASUMI NASAL 

fire dwindles the oven changes and is more 
like an ice box. 

When you give a party to your friends, and, 
the wee sma' hours approaching, you would 
fain retire, do not hesitate to do so, but do 
not hint anything thereof to your guests. 
That would be a sad breach of etiquette. They 
own the house while they are there and all 
that is therein. Your course is quietly to dis- 
appear to the remotest apartment you have 
and call the bed to come to you. It is good 
form to do this, for it allows the merriment to 
continue unrestrained. Should any one ask 
for you the maids will say that you are just 
outside, and will be in tadaima. In the morn- 
ing if your sake was good you will find your 
friends sleeping sweetly on your spare futon, 
a bed having gone to each of them, by the 
courtesy of ne san. 



KANE NAI NAREIBA. 



KANE NAI NAREIBA. 



For a man with a thirst and no money Yo- 
kohama is a joyous place. The combination 
so trying in America is of no inconvenience 
whatever over there, rather the reverse, be- 
cause the petty annoyances incident to hav- 
ing money always in one's pockets are done 
away with. 

You are always ''good for a drink" or any- 
thing else, and if you do not look too much 
like a sailor — "a Damyoureyes San," as the 
natives say — and are able to write your name, 
you are "good" for whatever you may wish. 
The secret of all this is chits. Chits, being 
interpreted, means ''drinking made easy," — 
drinking and other things. 

Chits in Yokohama constitute one of the 
pleasantest curses known to man. Great and 
wicked was the brain that invented them. The 
owner of this brain is already responsible for 
a thousand merry wrecks. Ten thousand men 
have drunk themselves to death on his in- 
95 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

genious plan. He killed them all but he did 
it with a liberality of manner that robbed 
death of its sting. 

Public opinion in Yokohama is not pro- 
nounced enough to emphasize the line be- 
tween the use and the abuse of chits. And so 
it happens that men, particularly young men, 
do not feel the restraint they would were 
they at home. They are a jolly lot, fond of 
out-door life, well traveled generally, and well 
read, with charming manners, and hospitable 
with a frank generosity that wins at once. 

They have leisure beyond the dreams of 
toilers in America — coming down to work at 
lo a. m. and quitting usually at 3. Out of 
these five hours at least one and a half are 
spent at the United Club or in the Grand or 
the Club hotels, where chit signing is indulged 
in as a liberal art. 

They ride their own horses in the races 
twice a year. When the races are on all busi- 
ness, even banking, is at a standstill. Wine 
flows like water, but no money is in sight. If 
you are thirsty you sign a chit. The boys 
who serve the drinks are not to be trusted 
with money. They push the bottle toward 
you, and some one signs. 

96 



KANE NAI NAREIBA. 

If, a few months later, you wish to pay, 
you'll have some trouble in finding the slip 
to which you put your name. You'll go from 
one hotel to another, and at each the man 
will say: 

"I don't know. They may be here. If I 
find them I'll send them up to you." 

If you are sure that they should be with 
him you may give him money and he will 
credit you. Then you own the place. What- 
ever you buy thereafter he will not charge 
against you, but will say, "That goes to square 
us for what you paid against the chits I 
never found." 

It is only globe trotters that have cash in 
their pockets in Yokohama, and they soon 
give up carrying it just as they give up eating 
rice currie with a fork. 

Railway people and beggars are the only 
persons who don't take chits, but the railroad, 
though convenient, is not necessary, and if 
one believes in the doctrine similia similibus 
curantur nit he can pass beggars by also and 
never know the touch of filty lucre. If you 
offer the money to the barber he says, *'0h, 
wait till the end of the month. We can't 
bother making up cash now. Sign a chit." 
97 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

At the tailor's you are asked, "Shall I send 
the goods to the club, or to your hotel? 
We'll send you a memorandum now, and 
then let you know how you stand with us. 
But that is not a bill, you know. Just let that 
run to your convenience, please. Send a chit 
when you like." 

The jinrikisha man takes a chit from the 
house to which he has delivered you. Every 
saloon in town passes out the little pad with 
the pencil hanging from one corner. Lodg- 
ings, meals, everything a hotel has to rent 
or sell to its guests, may be signed for on the 
chit. Nor is there anything that dives can 
furnish to promote delirium or to coax the 
coming of old age that a little chit won't settle 
for. 

He who has looked on the wine when it 
is red and has studied the mockery of strong 
drink need not moan in his first waking 
thoughts with despair brought on by the re- 
collection that his last penny went the night 
before unless, alas! he is too shaky to hold 
the little pencil. But even then a promise to 
sign later will bring him what he needs! 

There are settling days, of course, when the 
residents of Yokohama and of the other ports 

98 



KANE NAI NAREIBA. 

like it in the Far East, arm themselves with 
courage and go forth bravely to pay their 
chits. Some men do this once every two 
years. Others, who consider themselves pat- 
terns of regularity, square up the first of each 
January. Then there are men who have the 
names of the places where their chits are 
held, arranged in groups and each group 
assigned to a particular month of the year. 
At the first of each month they settle a 
part of their debts. The system keeps chit 
holders guessing, though, for readjustments 
in the scheme of sorting will occur even 
with the best-intentioned men. So that a 
holder who thought his money would come 
in January may find himself mysteriously 
moved into the December class. 

Besides these annuals, bi-annuals and 
monthlies there is a class, made up, it is said, 
of those who do not pay until they die. These 
men have life insurance policies, or assurance 
policies, to speak with local accuracy, and 
being thus assured, they do not bother who 
holds the ir chits, or whether the chits were 
signed ten days or ten years ago. There are 
few men, however, who have signed chits 
steadily for ten years. Three years is said to 
99 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

be the average. A man can sign a barrelful 
in that time — a barrelful that stands for many 
other barrels empty. 

When the assured man dies, his chits ap- 
pear and straightway are paid, the first money 
collected from the policy going for this. 

The number of chits not paid is large con- 
sidered by itself, though relatively small. It 
is this fact of which the penniless man takes 
advantage. He lives luxuriously on the fringe 
or ragged edge of the crazy quilt of chits 
until he loses his face or drinks himself into 
the hereafter. When his face is gone he may 
sign no longer. He drifts into the Consul's 
hands and is sent home steerage at Govern- 
ment expense. He may so dread the thought 
of home that he flees to the natives, with the 
most disreputable of whom he must have 
some acquaintance, and in return for a mod- 
icum of seaweed fish and rice beer, teaches 
Peter Parley's History of the World, or possi- 
bly the art of mixing American drinks. 

If he dies of delirium, the chances are that 
a sum will be raised by subscription. He will 
be buried decently and mourned for by other 
chit signers, who hope that soon some day 
others will do the same for them. 

I GO 



KANE NAI NAREIBA. 

As the transient population of Yokohama 
increases, chit signing may disappear, al- 
tiiough the habit is second nature to those 
who hve there now. Here and there a man 
rebels and swears that he'll never sign an- 
other chit, but a temptation that is ever-pres- 
ent can hardly be resisted long. With nothing 
more between a thirsty man and the drink he 
longs for, than the scrawling of his name on 
a slip of paper, the chances are that the thirst 
will win. Other things, too, he may crave as 
keenly, things that will do him less good than 
a drink; the fatal paper makes it all too easy, 
and reform difficult. 

"So they sent him to Yokohama to sober 
up, did they?" said a London newspaper man, 
in speaking to a friend of a youth whose par- 
ents thought Japan would do wonders for 
their bright but wayward child. 

"Might as well have sent him to Hades to 
cool off." 



YASO NO SENKIYOSHI. 



YASO NO SENKIYOSHI. 



In Japan the missionary's example is not 
exciting, but generally it is wholesome, and 
it is as an example he is most effective. He 
is taken seriously, excepting when the Mail, 
the Herald or the Gazette, being short on 
copy, gives him opportunity to point out in 
print the weak spots in the creeds, customs, 
rites or beliefs of his brother missionaries of 
other sects. The Japanese smile at him then, 
and the Buddhists say, *♦ Honorable divergence 
of honorable opinion apparently augustly ex- 
isting is among the teachers of the religion 
from the West." Then they rub their polls 
and become abstracted in contemplation of 
absolute unconsciousness. 

The Government likes the missionary. The 
Mikado decorated one some time ago and 
later granted him and his family all the rights 
of citizenship. The Minister of State, in trans- 
mitting the papers, declared that the Empire 
was to be congratulated in having so worthy 
105 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

a man within its borders. When this rever- 
end gentleman was presented to the court of 
the Heaven-Descended he gave His Imperial 
Majesty a Bible, the only one that ever found 
its way within the palace gates. 

As the missionary leaves home to live 
among the heathen — a word, by the way, he 
carefully eschews so long as he resides among 
them — the older women of his church tell 
him that his noble self-sacrifice awakens pity 
in their hearts. Pity there is certainly, and 
admiration, too. These are comforting to 
the missionary, for to him, as to most folk, 
it is grievous to give up home. 

But after he has lived a year in Japan it 
would be more grievous were he ordered to 
return. He has eaten of the lotus. When 
his seventh year arrives and he is to come 
back for a twelvemonth he does so with some 
little eagerness to see what home will look 
like after an absence of six years and with a 
joyous expectation of seeing relatives and old 
friends again; but after he has seen, his face 
turns toward the West with yearning, and he 
is not quite himself again until the land be- 
yond the setting sun — or, as the ancient name 
describes it, The Land of the Rising Sun — is 
io6 



YASO NO SENKIYOSHI. 

beneath his feet once more. The Empire he 
sought to convert has converted him. He 
does not say so, perhaps he does not know, 
but it is a fact. 

Yet the missionary is an influential per- 
son in the East, He has estabU^hed schools 
far and wide, several of them of exceptional 
excellence. He is the intellectual father of 
thousands of the young men of new Japan. 
These young men do not all profess the creed 
of their teacher, but it is safe to say that not 
one of them has failed altogether to profit by 
contact with the foreigner. The young man 
may still be unable to tell the truth, probably 
he is; but, at least, he has learned that there 
is such a thing as truth-telling — strange and 
wonderful though it is to him and of doubt- 
ful utility, he suspects — yet worthy of investi- 
gation. To accomplish even this is some- 
thing. 

Mission schools teach everything from 
chemistry to knitting socks. They represent 
almost every denomination of importance in 
the world, and they dispense knowledge al- 
most without cost. They are a boon to the 
country, but sometimes the earnest student 
takes advantage of them, and, if slang may 
107 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

be allowed, "pulls the missionary's leg." Such 
earnest student soon discovers that he re- 
ceives more atfention from the missionary 
and from the wife if he shows signs of con- 
version. Consequently, at whatever school 
he enters his name he begins to be conver- 
ted right away. 

As he changes from school to school, 
change being a great delight to the Japanese, 
he is converted frequently. By the time his 
education is complete he is one of the most 
converted persons in the world. Indeed, it is 
not extraordinary to find a member of the 
Greek Church who is also a Congregationalist, 
a French Catholic, a Baptist, a Unitarian, a 
Methodist, a communicant of the Church of 
England and belonging, possibly, to half a 
dozen minor mission organizations. 

The general run of mission students are as 
religious as the average American youth. 
Apparently, they enjoy their lessons in piety 
thoroughly; the girls in particular; but they 
have such gentle natures it is hard to believe 
they need instruction in humility and meek- 
ness, for they are themselves living lessons 
in these virtues. 

The missionary-in-the-cannibal-stew idea is 
1 08 



YASO NO SENKIYOSHI. 

upset by a visit to the homes of the evangel- 
ists in Tsukiji, Tokio. One sees there that 
even from a worldly point of view it is not a 
sad thing to be a missionary. So long as he 
is faithful to his creed he need not worry over 
worldly matters. His salary will be paid reg- 
ularly so long as he lives. He will have a 
home to live in, the mission doctor and phar- 
macist will attend to him and to his family 
without charge and he will get his traveUng 
expenses on his septennial vacations 
home. He goes to the mountains during 
the heat of summer, usually to Nikko, con- 
cerning which place the Japanese legend 
says: "Nikko wo minai uchi wa kekko to 
iuna," (''Until you have seen Nikko do not 
use the word beautiful"), and his children 
may be educated at the mission's expense. 

The salary for bachelor missionaries is 
about $700 gold a year, and for married men 
$1,500 gold. When one remembers that 
Mexican dollars are par in Japan and that a 
dollar gold equals two Mexican, that lodgings 
and medical attendance are found and that 
servant's wages are low — cooks, $10 to $15, 
Mexican, a month; nurses and maids, $4 to 
$5, ditto; and a jinrikisha, with a man to pull 
109 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 
it, who finds himself, $io a month — one no 
longer wonders that the missionary is so con- 
tented. 

Learning the language is the work the mis- 
sionary takes hold of first. He must master 
the colloquial in order to preach to the na- 
tives. Usually five years are allowed for this. 
He may take up the written language, too, if 
it seems advisable, but no one ever learned 
that well in five years. He must learn all 
over again how to think, for the mode of 
thought and the world of ideas into which he 
is entering are wholly different from those he 
was born into. 

The same circumstances to the Japanese 
mind and to the foreign mind suggest differ- 
ent ideas, and the ideas arrange themselves 
in different sequence. 

Japanese nouns have neither number or 
gender; adjectives, though not compared, 
have tense and mood inflections. There are 
no pronouns; verbs do not have person, but 
have a negative voice, and, as Professor 
Chamberlain says, forms to indicate causation 
and potentiality. So the spoken language 
will furnish ample occupation for even the 
most ardent during the first five years, 
no 



YASO NO SENKIYOSHI. 

The written language is so different from 
the spoken that were the daily paper read 
aloud a master of the colloquial might not 
understand even the general import of the 
article. To read the newspapers comfortably 
one should know at least 6,000 Chinese 
characters. Some minds have given way in 
the attempt to learn them. 

To the missionary with a turn for original 
investigation there is an infinite held in Japan, 
and this has saved men who loved intellect- 
ual life and found little congenial companion- 
ship among the natives. 

Buddhism, land tenture, philology and 
the intricacies of the native family re- 
lationship are only a few of the subjects that 
as yet foreigners need light upon. But the 
missionary is investigating patiently. Already 
he has enough material for an Encyclopedia 
Japonica. The thing he has to fight against 
is the influence of his surroundings, which 
tend to allay the keenest desire for achieve- 
ment. The septennial home-coming is a 
wholesome tonic. 



OTOKORASHI ONNA. 



OlOKORASHI ONNA. 



" Our new woman would faint with envy 
if she could see the way some of her 
Japanese sisters run things in their homes,*' 
said Gardner to some globe trotters at the 
Club Hotel one day. ** She would realize that 
with all her bloomers, cigarettes, canes and 
masculine shirt fronts, she is yet so far from 
her goal that she could hardly hope to reach 
it in this life. She'd either quit living or come 
to Japan. 

" Yes, I know it sounds a little strange. Ev- 
ery one says that the Japanese woman is the 
meekest person in the world, and that she is 
as sweet and charming as she is mild. Sir 
Edwin Arnold says: * Her life is summed up 
in three obediences — as a child she obeys her 
father, as a wife she obeys her husband, and 
as a mother she obeys her eldest son.* That's 
true of all the women except those on the 
west coast. Had Sir Edwin gone there he might 
have seen something to make a story out of. 
115 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

" I first heard of the Japanese New Woman, 
who, by the way, isn't at all new, when I was 
over in Noto, that little peninsula on the west 
coast that juts up into the Japan Sea. 

•*I had been knocking about there for a 
couple of months and lost my identity as a 
foreigner altogether. I learned something of 
the language and turned so brown that I was 
sure I'd never bleach out again. 

**I lived in a temple. Remember, if you 
roam off the beaten tracks in Japan, that tem- 
ples are better than hotels. The priests I 
lived with were of the temple Hoganji, and 
had wives, and their wives could cook. Board 
and lodging cost me $2.80 a month. Wor- 
shipers from every part of Noto came to this 
temple, for it was older than any man could 
say, and famous. 

*• Through the good offices of these priests 
I made friends in many conditions of life. 
Those who attracted me most were some 
fisherwomen. They came from a cluster of 
tiny hamlets down the coast. In traveling by 
the hill roads one wouldn't see a sign of this 
hamlet, although one might be only a stone's 
throw away, because it was hidden under the 
cHff. 

116 



OTOKORASHI ONNA. 

"Well, I noticed these women at the tem- 
ple several times, but there were never any 
men with them. Women from other places 
came with their husbands. These women 
didn't, but they had children, who called them 
'mama,' so I knew there must be husbands 
somewhere. They were handsome, with 
clear skin, bright eyes, and rounded limbs, 
which their peasant garb scarcely at all con- 
cealed, I couldn't understand why. Why were 
there no men with them to ring the bell 
above the alms box, to fondle Butsu's image 
and to gossip with the priests.^ 

"One evening, as my best friend among 
the priests sat with me enjoying a feast offer- 
ed up that day to the astral body of a dead 
headsman of the village, I learned the reason. 
My friend was born in one of those hamlets, 
and would have been there yet if his mother 
hadn't said that he should be a priest. His 
mother, mind you, not his father. That 
sounded strange, for I had been in the coun- 
try so long that I had forgotten that women 
had a word to say. 

" *Yes,' my friend went on, as he rubbed 
his hand over his shaven pate, 'it was a good 
thing for me, for a man doesn't have a good 
117 



Tales from tokio. 

time down there. He has to stay in the house 
to keep things clean and do the cooking. That 
is because he can't swim. At least, he can't 
swim as well as a woman. Why, my mother 
can swim two days in the busy season and 
not be used up, but my father would be tired 
out if he stayed in the water six hours.* 

" 'That's the way the women earn a living,' 
added the priest. 'If none of the people could 
swim they would have to go somewhere else, 
for there is no other work to do there. These 
shellfish that you like so well,' said he, pick- 
ing up a portion of the offering to the "hon- 
orable departed," 'come from there. They 
are difficult to get. The women go down 50 
to 100 feet after them. While the woman is 
diving for shellfish, the man is at home car- 
ing for the house. That's the custom in ev- 
ery household. 

" 'Once I remember a man got drunk and 
did not have the dinner ready when his wife 
came up. She told her friends, and they 
pulled him into the sea. Then they sat on 
him and pushed him down till he was almost 
drowned. He was crying "Go men nasai," 
(honorable pardon deign) all the time. He 
cried and the women laughed — all, except his 
118 



OTOKORASHI ONNA. 

wife. She struck his head with her hand and 
called him 'dara' (lacking). When they 
brought him to the beach again the drunk 
was all gone and he was humble. 

** ^People in Japan generally do not know 
about this place,' continued my friend; 'a for- 
eigner never saw it.' 

'* *One day when I was a small boy I went 
with my mother to sell shellfish on Kashima. 
When we were there a ship anchored off the 
shore. A boat full of men with green eyes 
and white clothes came to land. They took 
my mother's shellfish and all the pickles on 
the island. Then they went away. Some one 
said they were Rokoku no hito, (Russians). 
I don't know but they are the only foreigners 
most of us have ever seen. 

**Does your mother ever come here?" I 
asked. 

" * Oh, yes. She is coming tomorrow, and 
I am going back with her. Wouldn't you hke 
to go, too? If you would condescend to travel 
in such rude company and to enter our un- 
worthy hovel we shall be honored greatly.' 
*rm with you,' I said. 

"The next day his mother came. He said 
she was his mother, though she did not look 
119 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

to be 30 years old. She was plump and grace- 
ful and merry. On her back was a boy, her 
grandson, as I learned afterward, just past his 
sixth birthday. She had carried him twenty- 
six miles that morning. When she had bowed 
to us a half dozen times, she took a dip in the 
sea, gliding through the water like a seal, and 
then entered the temple. 

**Then we all seated ourselves in the guest 
room of the temple, and she nursed the six- 
year-old at her breast. Grandmothers do that 
here in Japan. She wished to return that 
afternoon. 'It will be moonlight, and we can 
be there by 10 o'clock,' she said. *I do not 
like to leave Danasan there all alone. Dana- 
san was her husband. I jollied her a little, 
and when dinner was served, offered her my 
sake cup so often with my profoundest bow 
that she said she would wait till morning. 

**She woke us about four o'clock, and by 
five we were on our way. She carried the 
child. 

*'Early in the afternoon we were in her 
home. The tide was out, so we did not see 
the women, who were in the water, and were 
hidden from view beyond some rocks. The 
men were at home doing chores in a shy, 
120 



OTOKORASHI ONNA. 

submissive way. Some were preparing shell- 
fish and laying them on the sandy beach to 
dry; others were grinding buckwheat out of 
which they would make soba, the native sub- 
stitute for macaroni. Some were bringing in 
faggots, and were putting in order the square 
holes that in every peasant's hut serve as 
fireplace or were burnishing kettles, and do- 
ing other odd jobs. No wonder my friend 
was glad he was a priest. 

**With the rising of the tide the women 
came up. Even the oldest were good look- 
ing. They had pouches hung to belts about 
their loins, and in these they placed the shell- 
fish they found upon the bottom. All of the 
pouches had something in them, many of 
them were full. As each one came out she 
emptied her pouch into a common pile on 
the beach, and one of the older women called 
off the name from a book and made a mark 
opposite. The marks seemed all alike, so I 
suppose the women were communists. The 
priest told me that all the villagers were in 
one company, and that each member did the 
best she could for the good of all. If any one 
grew lazy there was a penalty, but it had not 
been used for so long he had forgotten it 

121 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

"As I stood watching the heap grow, the 
priest's father, bowing low, said: 'Go men 
kudasai, nan nimo nai desukaredeimo, dozo 
owagari,* which means honorable pardon 
deign to give. There is absolutely nothing 
either to eat or to drink, but please honorably 
condescend to partake. 

*'I followed him into the house, and was 
just sitting down to a banquet of many shapes 
and sizes, the like of which I had never seen 
before,when there was a commotion outside. 

"*Nan deshoka!* exclaimed the priest. 
*What's up? Ah, korario' (come here). I hur- 
ried after him. There was a luckless man in 
the midst of a mob of women. He was pro- 
testing, and they, talking all at once, were 
heading to the sea, just like the case of which 
my friend had told me. The man was ducked, 
and then laid out to dry. 

" 'Was he drunk?' I asked. *Oh, no. That 
woman in the tub over there fell in love with 
him, and his wife found them talking together 
this morning. Now she is telling him that 
he must not have eyes and ears for other 
women. He will be careful after this, for he 
doesn't like the sea.' 

The woman in the tub was burnishing her 

122 



OTOKORASHI ONNA. 

arms with a small bag of rice powder, and 
paid little attention to what was going on. No 
one said anything to her, though she was the 
cause of the trouble. 

**I wonder what will happen when the shell- 
fish become extinct." 



TOKIO NO HANA. 



TOKIO NO HANA. 



Translated literally, "Tokio no hana" means 
**Tokio's flower"; translated freely, it means 
*'fire." Fire is the flower of Tokio. Any 
Japanese carpenter will tell you that, and the 
bigger the hana is the better he likes it, for 
the more work there will be for him. 

The carpenter ranks high in the artisan 
class, and in the popular mind, daiku san, as 
he is called, is still next to samurai, above the 
farmer and the merchant. 

Daiku san is, therefore, an important man, 
and when he is happy it is well to rejoice with 
him. Do not be vexed, if you find him pur- 
ring at your front gate as you rush out to 
notify the nearest policeman that your house 
is on fire. Rather tell him where the sake is, 
and beg him to help himself and to take 
home what he does not drink for a present 
to his family. 

He will do his prettiest in building a new 
house for you a few days later, and describe 
127 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

ycu to his co-laborers as a man of noble birth. 
Thus stimulated, the product of their labor 
will be excellent and you will stand well with 
the community. 

In Tokio it is expected that a house will 
burn down about once in seven years. There 
are plenty of exceptions, but rents are calcu- 
lated on this basis. The owner reckons to 
get his money back with interest in that time, 
and then is quite ready to build anew. 

A large fire in Tokio means good times 
and a picnic always. The first thing a man 
does when he is burned out is to banquet all 
his friends. His credit is good under the cir- 
cumstancs and a lack of ready cash is no hin- 
drance to festivity. 

The more houses he has lost the greater 
banquet he will serve, and daiku san will be 
much in evidence. He will assist in opening 
a koku of sake with generous dexterity and 
will stand by till the last drop of the forty 
gallons has been distributed. 

He will aid in the distribution of balls of 
rice, neatly rolled up in jackets of raw fish, 
assuring each guest, in turn, that there is 
nothing like the hres that bloom in the 
spring, and that in Tokio it is always spring. 
128 



TOKIO NO HANA. 

Figures do not lie, but in statements about 
fires in Japan they are misleading. A "griffin," 
reading in the Mail of a fire of one hundred 
houses, would think it a ** conflagration"; but 
nothing less than one thousand is a conflagra- 
tion in the Mikado's Empire, and a thousand 
make only a small one. 

Bishop Williams of the American Episcopal 
Church looked out of his study window one 
pleasant evening watching a fire two miles 
away, and then retired to dream that the in- 
evitable festivities of the morrow were inter- 
fering with his mission services. Three hours 
later his boy aroused him with the words, 
"Conflagration's wrath encroaches precipitate- 
ly," and the good Bishop escaped in a robe 
not prescribed by canon. His dreams were 
all too true. Eighteen thousand houses dis- 
appeared in smoke, and Tokio was on a 
spree for two weeks. 

Houses in Japan, however, signify less than 
in America. They are really roofs on pegs. 
The walls are sliding doors — "to" on the out- 
side, along the outer edge of "engawa"or 
verandas, " shoji" along the inner edge, 
which shut off the engawa from the liv- 
ing rooms, and "karakami" the separating 
129 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

walls between adjacent rooms. All these can 
be lifted out of their grooves easily and car- 
ried off. 

Even the tatanii, or straw mattresses, cov- 
ering the floor, are not fastened down, and 
they can be hurried away if there is a half- 
hour's warning. All but the poorest houses 
have "kura," allegedfire-proof buildings, near 
at hand, into which everything of value may 
be stowed away. 

These kura are of mud, plaster and tile, 
and look to be impervious to heat; but the 
radiance of *'Tokio no hana" is often too much 
for them, and they crumble into dust. 

Fire engines are used to throw water on 
the firemen, not on the fire. That would be 
an utter waste. Few of the pumps, which 
generally are worked by man power, throw 
more of a stream than ordinary garden hose 
— just about enough to keep the firemen soppy 
and steaming. 

With his heavily padded "kimono," short 
in the skirt and bound to his waist, like a 
Norfolk jacket, his combination of tights and 
leggins, his blue mits and pointed hood and 
his long barbed pole, the fireman prances 
about in the smoke and the glare of the 
130 



TOKIO NO HANA. 

flames, pulling down everything to clear a 
path to leeward, and so starve the fire. He 
looks like a devil, but he is only an acrobat. 

Whenever there is a lull he will do stunts 
on a bamboo ladder — stand on his head on 
the top rung and similar feats. He will be in 
for the picnic, too, along with the carpenter. 

The combination of kerosene lamp and 
earthquake produces many "Tokio no hana'* 
and similar blossoms in other parts of Japan. 
Instinctively every one runs to the lamps 
when the house begins to shake. Another 
cause of fire is the lucifer match, still in use 
among the poorer people. 

A record of Tokio fires in the last two 
hundred and sixty years shows where they 
are most prevalent. The district is called the 
fire district, and within its boundary shingle 
roofs are prohibited. Tin roofs are not yet 
introduced. There is, however, a greatly im- 
proved system of waterworks now approach- 
ing completion in Tokio, and, with hydrants 
and better engines, *'Tokio no hana" may 
some day be a legend only. 

At present, however, it flourishes, and is 
taken as a guarantee of joyous times — a truth- 
ful herald of prosperity. 
131 



SHIMBUN. 



SHIMBUN. 

Wearing and vexatious enough in all coun- 
tries, in the Land of the Rising Sun the busi- 
ness of editing and publishing a daily paper 
has been so uncertain that it is a marvel it 
was carried on at all. To an American such 
uncertainty would be intolerable. The Japan- 
ese editor, like Brer Rabbit, "never knows 
what minnit's going to be the next." Since 
the promulgation of the constitution in 1889 
papers have been suspended at the rate of 
one a week, and some of the Avriters have 
grown so familiar with the way to the ''hon- 
orable jail" that it is said they could go there 
blindfolded. Since the war with China the 
Japanese have done a great deal of talking 
about their equality to Westerners, but in the 
matter of freedom of the press they cannot 
fail to see that they are centuries behind the 
times. This was demonstrated in the recent 
trials of the editors of several papers, among 
them the Tokio Shimbun, for criticising the 
135 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

Minister of the Imperial Household. Public 
opinion was tremendously aroused, and Par- 
liament has passed laws modifying the rigor 
of press censorship to some extent. 

Excepting in those papers in the English 
language which are pubHshed in the treaty 
ports, and are owned and edited almost ex- 
clusively by Englishmen, who do not fear the 
red pencil of the censor, no one has dared to 
discuss questions of state. The list of ''dont's,'* 
that is, the list of things a writer on a paper 
must not say, is long, and, worse than this, 
no one outside the Bureau of Press Censor- 
ship knows what it contains. It is only by 
guessing and by bitter experience that an 
editor knows what to avoid. If a paper pub- 
lishes an article that is not approved, the 
paper is suspended, and that is all there is 
about it. No reason is given. The disap- 
proved article is not even mentioned in the 
order of suspension. Small wonder then that 
there is discontent, and that the cry for re- 
form grows louder every day. Here is a 
translation by Basil Hall Chamberlain of what 
the editor of the Nichi-Nichi Shimbun says of 
the tribulations of journalism in Dai Nippon: 

Newspapers and magazines are confronted 

136 



SHIMBUN. 

by a special danger — the danger, namely, of 
suspension when their words are held to be 
prejudicial to the public order, and a suspen- 
sion, too, against w^hich there is no appeal. 
Article xix. of the newspaper regulations now 
ill force says: "When a newspaper has print- 
ed matter which is considered prejudicial to 
public order or subversive of public morality, 
the Minister of State for the Interior is em- 
powered to suspend its publication either to- 
tally or temporally." Nor is there a word said 
in the regulations whereby the prejudicial or 
non-prejudicial character of a statement or 
argument is to be determined. It is sufficient 
that the official in question should decide in 
accordance with his own individual opinion 
that the statement or argument is thus pre- 
judicial to public order for a newspaper to 
incur at any moment the penalty of suspen- 
sion either total or temporary. It is indispu- 
table that the authorities are empowered by 
the law of the land to act thus. The consti- 
tution itself gives them this power. The re- 
sult is that we writers are constantly obliged 
in taking our pen in hand to keep to our- 
selves seven or eight of every ten opinions 
we would fain express. 

137 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

When a paper ventures too far and the cen- 
sor is called upon to write the order of sus- 
pension, he is brief but polite — wonderfully 
polite. He puts the honorifics '*o" or "go" 
before each of the nouns and verbs. Pre- 
fixed to a noun **o" means honorable, to a 
verb it means honorably; similarly "go" means 
august, augustly. So the order when it ar- 
rives will read somewhat as follows: 

Deign honorably to cease honorably pub- 
lishing august paper. Honorable editor, hon- 
orable publisher, honorable chief printer, 
deign honorably to enter august jail. 

The honorable editor with his honorable 
coworkers bow low before the messenger of 
the censor, acknowledging the honor of the 
august notification, and then accompany him 
to the honorable jail, chatting the meanwhile 
of the weather, or of the flower shows, or of 
the effect of the floods on the rice crop. Cen- 
turies of breeding under Japanese etiquette 
have rendered it impossible for them to show 
annoyance. They do not know how. 

When a paper has been suspended the first 
intimation the public has of the fact is the 
quiet in the composing room. Few places in 
the world where regular business is carried 

138 



SHIMBUN. 

on are noisier than a Japanese composing 
room. The amount of noise therein is deter- 
mined only by the cubic capacity of the apart- 
ment. If it is a larger room there is more 
noise, if smaller there is less, but in working 
hours it is always chock full. The confusion 
at the tower of Babel is there vividly suggest- 
ed every day. For the ordinary Tokio paper 
there will be at least twenty men and boys 
marching to and fro, each yelling at the top 
of his voice. There seems neither head nor 
tail to this confusion, but, nevertheless, each 
of these screeching people has an object at 
which he looks intently while he parades 
about. This object is a *'line" or stick of Jap- 
anese characters, for which he must find the 
appropriate types. It is something of a job 
to find all these, for to print even a four-page 
paper in Japan upwards of 5,000 different 
characters are used. These require many 
fonts, which are crowded into a small space, 
that there may be as little travelling as pos- 
sible. 

The ''devil" goes about these fonts with a 

waltzing motion, there are so many corners 

to turn, and always with his eyes fixed on his 

stick, as though it were a sacred relic. In- 

139 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

deed, to the stranger in the street below who 
looked up through the long windows, which 
reach from floor to ceiling, it might seem that 
a religious dance was going on, and that the 
devotees were wrought well up to the frenzy 
point. 

On going up inside one finds an old man 
sitting in a corner reading copy and cutting 
it into strips with what looks at first glance 
like a pair of sugar tongs, but what is really 
shears. As each slip falls, a "devil" grabs it 
and starts off on his pilgrimage, singing at 
the top of his voice the names of the char- 
acters he seeks. He has to pronounce the 
names of each character aloud in order to 
know what it is, for he understands by hear- 
ing rather than by seeing, and his own paper 
would be unintelligible to him unless he read 
it aloud. As all the other imps yell also, he 
has to be vociferous in order to hear himself. 
When he has collected the types for all the 
characters on his slip he gives them to the 
head compositor, a learned man with goggles, 
who puts in the particles and the connecting 
words and hands the completed form to a 
pair of proof readers, one of whom sings 
them to the other. As soon as the proof is 
140 



SHIMBUN. 

ready, the paper is made up, all hind side 
before it would seem to a foreigner. The 
reading lines are perpendicular and the col- 
umns run across the page from right to left, 
the first column beginning at the upper right- 
hand corner of what in an American paper 
would be the last page. 

The Japanese reporter makes about as 
much money as the Japanese policeman — 
that is, $6 a month. In Tokio some of them 
make more, and in the smaller towns they 
make as little as $2 a month, but $6 is a fair 
average. They are not sent out on regular 
assignments as a rule, but are given a roving 
commission. The editor tells them to get 
news, real news if there is any, but to get 
news; and they never return empty-handed. 
A good news-gatherer is rare among them, 
but the * 'fakir" is plentiful enough and really 
clever. 

Interviewing hardly can be said to be pop- 
ular. The people do not understand it and 
do not like it. Japan is esoteric and doesn't 
tell what it knows if it can help itself. Still, 
there are interviews in Japanese papers. Poli- 
ticians have themselves interviewed occasion- 
ally, and "globe-trotters" usually submit. 
141 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

But the remarkable thing about these pa- 
pers, is not that they are so meagre in every 
department, but that they exist at all. The 
first Japanese newspaper was published in 
1872, by John Black, an Englishman, who 
founded the Nisshin Shinji Shi. Before that 
there had been only occasional terror sheets, 
which the *'yomi uri" — the native chapmen — 
hawked about after a particularly bloody 
murder, or catastrophe, such as a great fire, 
a flood or an earthquake. 

There are no headlines nor any display ad- 
vertisements. The paper consists generally 
of a leading article, a lot of news items, 
more or less untrustworthy, a jumble of ad- 
vertisements, sometimes printed on the mar- 
gin of the sheet, and a section of a continued 
story. There is almost no telegraphic news 
and little correspondence, either local or for- 
eign. Occasionally a student who is studying 
abroad will send a letter, but not one of the 
640 papers and periodicals now published in 
the empire maintains a regular correspondent 
anywhere, not even in the large Japanese 
cities. The news department is as largely 
"fake" as it is in any of our issues of the "new 
journalism," but it is the leaders, after all, 
142 



SHIMBUN. 

that make one wonder why the paper is pub- 
lished. With the sharp red pencil of the cen- 
sor pointing at him, ready to be thrust into 
him behind his back at any moment, the edi- 
tor has evolved into a man skilled in the 
art of saying nothing, or, at least, what reads 
like nothing to the uninitiated. He is a marvel 
at double entendre. But with all his clever- 
ness he is caught so often that he has become 
inventive, and has devised artifices whereby 
he has hoped to escape. The most success- 
ful of these was the dummy, or ''prison 
editor," as he was known in the Oriental sanc- 
tum. This functionary had an easy time. He 
had nothing to do on the paper, never wrote 
a line, but when those who did write said 
anything that the censor judged might mean 
something, and the paper was suspended, the 
prison editor stepped forward, bowed low, 
and said, **What augustly must be, probably 
augustly must be." Then he trotted off to 
prison. This scheme worked well for a long 
time, but after a while the censor demanded 
that the principal three men connected with 
the paper should go to the "honorable jail." 
Three dummies were more than any paper 
could afford to maintain, and so there are no 

143 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

proxies now. Black's paper was followed by- 
others, among them the Kwampo, or Official 
Gazette;the Tokio Shimpo and the Kokai,semi- 
official; the Mai Nichi Shimbun, the Yomi Uri 
Shimbun, and the Ubin Hochi Shimbun, all 
liberal; the Jiu Shimbun and the Ninken 
Shimbun, radical; the Nihon and the Chusei 
Nippo, conservative and anti-foreign; the 
Fuzaku Gwaho, an interesting illustrated rec- 
ord of manners and customs; and the Maru 
Maru, a comic paper inspired originally by- 
Punch. There are also prominent the Chu- 
guai Shiogio Shimpo, a commercial daily; 
the Jiji Shimpo, imperial; the Tokio Nichi 
Nichi Shimbun, and in Osaka the Asahi, (Morn- 
ing Sun) and the Mainichi, which are read 
widely in the south of Japan. 

All these papers use the written language, 
which differs from the spoken language both 
in its grammar and in its vocabulary. Mr. 
Chamberlain says that the Japanese are still 
in the condition of Europeans of the twelfth 
century: *'They do not write as they speak. 
A man may know the spoken language thor- 
oughly, and yet not be able to understand the 
daily paper when it is read aloud, nor even 
the note he has just asked his native clerk in 
144 



SHIMBUN. 

his office to write and to send up to the house, 
announcing that he will bring up a friend to 
•tiffin/ " 

Speeches are taken down in shorthand, but 
are almost always translated into the written 
language before they are printed. The one 
exception to the rule is in the Record of Par- 
liament speeches, wherein the words are 
published just as they were uttered. When 
this Record first appeared the rural members 
were filled with consternation, for there they 
saw held up to the public eye all their pecul- 
iarities of provincial dialect. Old men as some 
of them were, they got themselves teachers 
and set about learning to speak like towns- 
folk. 

This Record is the beginning of a tremen- 
dous reform which will lead to the disuse of 
the written language, first in newspapers, and 
finally, it is hoped, in books as well. For the 
spoken language is the living language, the 
language of the people. With the present 
Parliament a new order of things may be es- 
tablished in Japan, and freedom of the press 
guaranteed. Ministers of State incline to 
think that the time is almost come. But it is 
well to remember that while the present laws 
145 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

are cruelly severe as judged by Western na- 
tions, they are, as Prof. Chamberlain points 
out, not so severe historically speaking, be- 
cause it is hardly a quarter of a century since 
freedom of speech was denied to the Mikado's 
subjects, not theoretically, perhaps, but to all 
intents and purposes. It was a capital of- 
fence to memorialize the government. Those 
who did so, and history gives many instances, 
were wont to write what they had to say in 
the form of a letter to the Prime Minister, and 
then calmly kneeling at the gate of some 
public building, commit hara-kiri, or, to use 
the polite term, seppuku. The police, who 
may have stood respectfully at a distance 
while the act was committing, would find the 
letter on searching the body of the suicide, 
and report its contents to the Minister. 



OJIGI TO NIU SATSU. 



OJIGI TO NIU SATSU. 



Election inspectors in Japan have rubber 
backs. They need them, for on voting days 
they have, at the lowest calculation, 520,000 
bows to make, and now the franchise has 
been extended they will soon have to ojigi 
five times as often. That is a great deal of 
hinge work, and demands elasticity and lub- 
rication, especially as ojigi does not mean a 
mere nod of the head. To be done properly, 
the body must double at the hips, folding 
after the manner of a two-foot rule. The 
tachiainin, therefore, as the inspectors are 
called, no matter how automatic their early 
training may have made them, have no snap 
— not a particle when night comes, and the 
polls having closed, they climb into their 
jinrikisha and go home to be shampooed by 
some blind amma and restored to life. 

Five hundred and twenty thousand bows is 
a conservative estimate. It allows each voter 
only one jigi, which is ridiculous, for it is 
149 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

hardly conceivable that a voter should 
approach the inspectors, seated behind the 
ballot boxes, with less than half a dozen fold- 
ings, and etiquette naturally demands that 
the inspectors should fold, too. It is safe to 
allow three jigi for each voter, and to declare 
boldly that every general election day here- 
tofore in Japan has witnessed inspectorial 
doubling to the extent of 1,500,000, or 
enough to supply the most energetic saint a 
lifetime. 

The new franchise, by similar reasoning, 
implies 7,500,000 bows. Allowing 100 foot- 
pounds to a bow, the energy folded off into 
space on voting days is found to be 75,000,000 
foot-pounds; or 2,272 horse-power. It costs 
something to be polite and it takes time; but 
time is plentiful in the Land of the Rising 
Sun. 

A Japanese needs about a quarter of a 
minute to ojigi. At this rate one man would 
be occupied continuously for 345 years 6 
months and 14 days if he were to do all the 
folding himself. 

Japan's population is somewhere near 42- 
000,000, and in area the Empire is about the 
same as California. Only about twelve per 
150 



OJIGI TO NIU SATSU. 

cent, of this land is suitable for cultivation. 
The people, therefore, are crowded together, 
and large land holdings are not numerous. 
This accounts in some measure for the few 
voters in Japan at present, because the fran- 
chise was limited to men at least twenty-five 
year's old that paid direct taxes on land — 
chiokusatsu — or on incomes — kokuzai — of at 
least fifteen yen. 

As an instance of a result of the operation 
of this law, Tokio, the capital, with a pop- 
ulation of 2,000,000, has had only 7,000 voters, 
or one to every 285 of the inhabitants. Al- 
most all of the men entitled to vote have 
availed themselves of the privilege. The 
kikensha, or "stay-at-homes," have been rare 
when compared to America. 

Voting is a semi-private, semi-public act, 
performed with much solemnity and no dis- 
order. No one besides the voter and the in- 
spectors is allowed in the polling booth while 
the function is in progress. The inspectors 
are the Mayor, or the headman of the district, 
and two or four other men chosen by him^ 
They may be all of the same political faith, 
and, if inclined to do so, could manipulate the 
ballots to their own advantage materially. The 
151 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

law says nothing about bi-partisan inspection 
boards. 

Another opportunity these officials have to 
help along their friends is in advising the 
voters how to vote. They may even fill out 
the ballot for him if he does not wish to do 
it himself. His education may not extend to 
Chinese characters, and not caring to use the 
humble hiragana, he begs the inspectors, 
with many jigi, to do the names of the can- 
didates for him in Chinese. 

The ballot box is almost an idol in the eyes 
of the newly enfranchised Japanese. Indeed, 
they approach it with a reverence beyond that 
accorded the temple images of Buddha. They 
are used to Buddha's images, but the ballot 
box is still mysterious. It is still awful in the 
eyes of the older natives for a private citizen 
to take it upon himself to make suggestions 
to the Government. It is indeed a manifes- 
tation of effrontery, and in former days was 
punished by death, not only of the citizen, 
but often of his entire family. 

A ballot certainly is a suggestion, and so the 
old men stand in fearful awe of it. 



BUTSUZO KOSHITE. 



BUTSUZO KOSHITE. 



If you are ill in Japan, rub an idol. Doing 
so is a custom of the country, and is effica- 
cious, probably, as the pious have persisted 
in it for centuries and have worn out many 
of their sacred images making themselves 
well. 

Of course, there are a few side studies to 
attend to, also, such as jerking the gong, 
hanging like a huge flattened sleighbell over 
the steps at the entrance of the temple where 
Butsu, the idol, sits; and giving the shaven- 
pated caretaker of the image three or four 
copper coins with square holes in them. As 
it would take 2,000 of these coins, which are 
called rin, to equal an American gold dollar, 
the cost of bell-ringing and idol-rubbing is 
not excessive. 

If the rin, the ring and the rub do not ef- 
fect a cure, take a bath and try again. Facil- 
ities for ablution are always at hand in Japan. 
The cleansing places near the temples are 
15s 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

often extremely rich in decoration, even gor 
geous, but always in harmony with the na- 
tural groves surrounding them. 

After a wash, another jerk at the gong and 
a second contribution of rin one may rub 
with renewed faith and harder. The harder 
the better, for the exercise, at least, is health- 
ful. As the fruits of faith are not often pluck- 
ed the moment the seed is planted, it will do 
no harm to take another bath while waiting 
to be cured and to contribute a few more rin. 
This pleases Butsu, and the polished poll of 
his care-taker, doing obeisance before the 
image and picking up the rin, glistens in his 
smile. 

One gains some little knowledge of the 
physical ills of the Japanese by studying the 
idols. These are most worn in the sickest 
parts. To the south and east of the Empire, 
where the images are invariably eviscerated, 
stomachache undoubtedly prevails; to the 
west headaches abound, for the images have 
no foreheads; and to the north, where Butsu's 
thorax is worn away, haibiyo (lung sick) is 
prevalent. 

Butsu would never win the prize in a beauty 
contest outside of the Far East. Often enough 

156 



BUTSUZO KOSHITE. 

his image is anything but lovely to look upon. 
Sometimes he is stone, sometimes of bronze 
and often of wood. He wears better done in 
bronze. Then all the suffering parts shine 
brightly. In stone these spots are black from 
handling and would not pass an inspection 
by an American Board of Health. In wood 
he is sad and horrible, having been lacquered 
bright red originally, with green eyes, round 
which were large black circles. 

In a few years the lacquer is rubbed off the 
districts of affliction and the wood rapidly 
succumbs. Knees, elbows, stomach, chest, 
nose, shoulders, eyes and forehead all give 
way, and, unless the patchman minds his 
mending, Butsu will become "all sick" and 
disappear entirely. Generally, though, the 
patchman is diligent and keeps Butsu pretty 
well up to weight with annual abdomens and 
such other restorations as are necessary. 

This idol-rubbing has attracted the atten- 
tion of the Japanese health authorities, who 
demand a strict regard for cleanliness on the 
part of the rubbers. A little more on the part 
of the rubbee would not be a futile precaution. 
The images have exceptional opportunities to 
spread disease, and were they of service in a 
^S7 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

country not inveterately clean they would be 
centres of permanent epidemic. As it is, they 
grow dirty enough, and a bath would do them 
good. 

Faith and ignorance in equal parts con- 
tinue the people in the custom. Sometimes 
the faith is vicarious. A mother whose child 
has opthalmia will hold his hand against the 
idol's orbs and then put the little palm 
against his own wee, blinking eyes, saying, 
*'Nam, mada Butsu" — words of which she 
does not know the meaning, but whose ac- 
cent declare her faith. Always the idol has 
the first rub, and then the afflicted part of the 
sufferer. 

When la grippe finally reached Tokio, after 
its long eastward journey from St. Petersburg, 
it found the people easy prey. Soon the 
whole Empire was sick. Schools, barracks, 
offices, factories and shops closed their doors, 
and the rubbing idols thought they saw their 
finish. Had the epidemic lasted four months, 
instead of two, their fears would have been 
realized, for never before in the history of 
Dai Nippon had they such a handling. 

The scenes in the temples harboring these 
idols were extraordinary, for the disease 

158 



BUTSUZO KOSHITE. 

seemed to pick out the peculiar weakness of 
each individual independently, and no two 
persons in the crowd appeared to be rubbing 
themselves quite alike. An expert contortion- 
ist could not have accomplished what some 
of these devotees attempted, but their exer- 
tions were beneficial, viewed as calisthenics. 

The groves of the temples wherein are the 
images of Butsu are the children's commons, 
where all the youngsters of the neighborhood 
gather when out of school. There the baiya, 
or nurses, go, with their tiny charges hang- 
ing to their backs, and there are the old men 
and the old women. 

The earlier and the later childhood meet 
there. Joy brings one and pain the other. 
Butsu is good to both. He smiles upon those 
that* are merry, and they are merrier, and the 
peace of his smile soothes those that are in 
pain. He is, indeed, often grotesque and 
sometimes horrible as the natives have con- 
structed him, but many of his images are of 
noble dignity. Peaceful and restful, these 
features of the founder of the faith of millions 
of human beings compel attention. Contem- 
plation ends in inspiration. 



GANJITSU. 



GANJITSU. 

Japan is the jolliest country in the world at 
New Year's. It is three times jolly, in fact. 
Each January i, 43,000,000 subjects in the 
land of the Rising Sun begin to paint the 
Mikado's Empire the glorious roseate hue of 
the Imperial emblem. This deep red harmony, 
they say, is eminently fitting at the beginning 
of the year; and that the painting may be well 
done, they administer three distinct and sep- 
arate coats right lavishly. 

The bottom, or foundation coat is two full 
weeks in putting on. Joy flows in streams 
along the thoroughfares, swelled by rivulets 
from every house. All the city folk call on 
each other; all the country folk come in to 
help them do it, and everybody gives every- 
body presents. This may be called the offi- 
cial New Year's. It dates only from 1870, 
when the Japanese Government changed its 
calendar to conform with that of the rest of 
the world. February i there is a second coat- 
^ 163 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

ing — the New Year's of Old Japan, still dear 
to the rural heart. All the country folk call 
one on another and the city folk go out to 
help them. There is less formality about this, 
and less eclat, but good-fellowship abounds, 
and joy is rampant for a week. 

The third coating is given in good old Chin- 
ese style. Its date depends on the moon, as 
does our Easter festival. Each household 
celebrates by itself in part, and in part with 
outside friends, but this feast is more domes- 
tic, though not less sacredly observed than 
the two preceding. 

The New Year season is the time to see 
Japan socially at its best. It is true there are no 
kiku, as they call chrysanthemums, nor cherry 
blossoms. The kiku is in the fall and the 
sakura in the spring, both seasons when all 
out doors is a garden party and exquisitely 
picturesque, but, with all its loveliness, it is 
only the outside one sees then. 

To see into the homes and the heart of 
Japan one must be there New Year's. Busi- 
ness generally is suspended, both private and 
public. All is wide open then, and hospitality, 
such as is unknoAvn in Europe or America, is 
the rule without exception. 
164 



GANJITSU. 

The jin-riki-sha coolie is the only one that 
works, but his task hardly is irksome. Wait- 
ing, he feasts in the kitchen with the cook, 
while his fare makes a call. 

The geisha has her busiest season at New 
Year, but her work is all play, which she en- 
joys quite as much as those whom she enter- 
tains. Her plaintive love songs are never 
sung more sweetly than at the beginning of 
the year, when the heart of the nation warms 
anew. The geisha is very near that heart, 
and chirrups sympathetically. 

The Emperor and the Empress receive for 
three days. On the first day only those of 
royal blood, the highest officers of state and 
foreign diplomats make their bows. Then 
follow in turn personages of less degree, down 
to those who, having some title to recogni- 
tion, are honored with a gracious notification 
of the reception at the palace, but are expect- 
ed not to come. 

The Princes royal and their consorts, after 
paying their respects to the throne and each 
to the other, in due order, according to de- 
gree of kinship to the Mikado, receive in their 
turn in petty state the Ministers of State, di- 
plomats, members of Parliament, distinguish- 
165 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

ed folk and any foreigners who may wish 
to pay their respects. These receptions are 
extremely formal and every one connected 
with them is glad they continue only three 
days. 

The grand folk on the fourth day join the 
crowd and, like them, go hither and thither 
to every accessible acquaintance, as ordinary 
people have been doing from the early morn- 
ing of Ganjitsu, New Year's day. Of course, 
no one can call on every individual of his 
acquaintance in the empire, so he resorts to 
postal cards, which he dispatches to all the 
friends he is unable to see personally. 

^'Rejoicing in your honorable health despite 
the weather's inclemency," Japanese letters 
always begin, even though the writer has no 
knowledge either of the honorable health or 
of the weather in the place where his friend 
may be. This guess is followed by words to 
this effect: 

"August consideration honorably vouch- 
safed during past year, most humbly, most 
gratefully acknowledged ;deign to continue the 
same and to pardon me the selfish one, the 
unspeakable effrontery of venturing to ad- 
dress honorable you. Your little idot, " 

i66 



GANJITSU. 

With each call the caller presents a gift, 
usually some sort of food; but anything will 
do, even money. Boxes of eggs are in de- 
mand; so is castera, or sponge cake. Castera 
is from the Portuguese or the Spanish, who 
first taught the Japanese the art of making 
that dainty. Wine, beer, all sorts of canned 
goods and articles of apparel are distributed, 
too. It is a great season for the brewer, the 
baker, the confectioner, the distiller and the 
hens. 

As presents come in such profusion, they 
would accumulate beyond control were it not 
for the custom of ''passing along." It is not 
at all necessary that madam should eat all the 
eggs that are given to her. That would be 
difficult, and to keep them long about the 
house would not be pleasant; so, after reserv- 
ing whatever she chooses, she puts her card 
in each of the remaining boxes, and when 
her lord and master comes in for the fresh 
supply of gifts which he needs in order to 
continue his round of calls, she hands them 
to him. 

Thus replenished, my lord starts out again, 
while madam stays at home continuing collect- 
ing. This keeps up for two weeks, during 
167 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

which the castera and the eggs do not grow 
fresher. The dealers who supply these com- 
modities, however, provide against damage 
to their reputations by pasting in the box of 
cake or of eggs: "This cake was baked at ii 
p. m. December 31; these eggs were laid at 
2 a. m. January i, kotoshi," (this year) — or 
words to that effect. 

As these presents are passed along they 
often complete the circuit and arrive at the 
place whence they were first sent out, but it 
is only to begin the tour again. There is no 
rest for a Japanese New Year's gift until it is 
eaten or drunk or lost. 

All one's tradespeople will call, bearing 
samples of their wares commensurate with 
the amount of patronage each man has re- 
ceived. They present these samples with many 
profound bows and a request for a continu- 
ance of their patron's august condescension 
during the ensuing year. 

The shops are closed to business, but open 
for pleasure. There is a banquet in each 
home from early morning until early morn- 
ing every day of the two weeks, and all those 
who have honored the place with their pa- 
tronage are expected to call and bring friends. 
168 



GANJITSU. 

Foreigners seem to be particularly welcome 
at this time, especially Americans, for the 
common people love America. A man from 
the States might begin to feast early January 
I and continue feasting until January 15 if he 
could endure it, even among strangeis. They 
would show more genuine hospitality than his 
own cousins would at home. 

As there is plum pudding for Christmas in 
England and turkey forThanksgiving in Amer- 
ica, so there is mochi and shirozaki for New 
Year's in Japan. Mochi is good, and so is 
shirozaki. Mochi is made of rice boiled in 
fresh water and pounded in a mortar until it 
is dough, then rolled out like a yard of baker's 
bread, cut into slices and laid to dry till a 
slight crust forms, when it is ready to toast. 
Often boiled beans are worked into the dough 
till the casual globe trotter might mistake it 
for peanut candy. 

Shirozaki is white and thick, quite different 
from the thin, pale sherry color of atarimai- 
zake, or ordinary sake. It is sweet and whole- 
some, made of rice, with the body of the fer- 
mented grain left in. 

The country folk repeat this grand two 
weeks of celebration February i . They are 
169 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

slow to adopt new customs, though they en- 
joy the official New Year in town hugely, if 
they can "get to go." City folk, especially 
those who long for the good old days, are 
with their cousins in the country for the sec- 
ond feasting, and stay the week with them. 
Then when the rrioon changes, comes the 
oldest feast of all, the Chinese New Year's, 
and the country rests for eleven months. 

The custom of New Year's calls, once so 
prevalent here, was introduced into Holland, it 
is said, by the Dutch merchantmen who 
traded with Japan early in the fifteenth cen- 
tury. Tradition holds them responsible for 
the bustle too, developed from the obe. Both 
of which importations are in small evidence 
in busy America these days. 



SHIBAYA TO YAKUSHA. 



SHIBAYA TO YAKUSHA. 



One needs gymnastic eyes to be an actor 
in Japan and a laminated throat. The eyes 
count for more, however. A good eye wig- 
gler need not want for a position. An india- 
rubber face is useful also, for "making faces" 
is an art with the Japanese stage folk. The 
achievements of these artists are illustrated 
accurately by the contorted countenances 
shown on the cheap paper fans so plentiful in 
summer-time. These fan illustrations, be they 
never so grotesque and weird and fantastic, 
are exact representations of stage scenes. 
They are not exaggerations. The garments 
shown in the pictures, which conceal so ef- 
fectively all outline of the human form, are 
stage costumes such as Japanese actors wear 
to-day, and the faces, in spite of the distor- 
tion they display, are portraits of theatrical 
stars, that any one familiar with the native 
theatre would recognize immediately. 
-There are no better equipped actors in the 
173 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

world than those found on the Japanese 
boards. The theatres, too, such as Meijiza 
and Kabukiza, in Tokio, are excellent with 
their electric lights, their revolving stages and 
their simple yet beautiful scenery. Many 
of the plays would be intelligible to an audi- 
ence that did not know a word of Japanese. 
Danjuro and Kikiguro speak a world language 
and will make you laugh and cry at will. It 
is a pity they cannot be prevailed upon to 
make an American tour. Their versatility is 
marvelous. They play comedy, tragedy and 
farce, in either male or female parts, with equal 
facility and felicity. They were born to the 
stage, as were their parents and grandparents 
before them for a dozen generations. They 
have acted from the time theywere of sufficient 
size to be seen by the spectators. With such 
inheritance and such training it would be 
strange if they did not excel. 

In spite of all this excellence, however, it is 
only recently the theatre has been in good 
repute in the Mikado's Empire. Count In- 
ouye's famous garden party in the fall of 1887, 
at which his Imperial Majesty was present 
and saw Danjuro, Kikiguro and other great 
artists, has set the seal of supreme approval 
174 



SHIBAYA TO YAKUSHA. 

upon a professon that before that time had 
been tabooed. 

In the census of old Japan the actors were 
enumerated *'ippiki, ni hikki, sambiki," etc. 
That seems harmless enough until it is ex- 
plained that, in counting in Japanese, ichi, ni, 
san, shi, go, roku, etc., certain auxiliaries to 
the numerals are used, according to the kind 
of things that are being counted. For in- 
stance, human beings are mei, and are count- 
ed ichi mei, ni mei, sam mei, etc. Flat things, 
such as sheets of paper, are mai: ichi mai, ni 
mai, etc.; houses are ken: ikken, ni ken, sam- 
ben, etc.; boats are so: isso, ni so, san zo, etc.; 
and living creatures, except human beings 
and birds, are hiki: ippiki, nihiki, sambiki, shi 
hiki etc. Actors, therefore, came under the 
general classification of beasts. 

The upper classes kept away from the 
theatres, but, in spite of all, strong plays were 
produced, and financially, at least, the "pro- 
fession" prospered. Today distinguished 
actors are received in the homes of persons 
of tlie highest rank. 

The Japanese theatre is the only place left 
in which one can study the ways of old Japan. 
Though it retains many of the ancient crudiT 

17$ 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

ties, it is accurate in presenting historical cus- 
toms. Its language, even, is ancient, and the 
intonation of the actors marvelous and ter- 
rible. No such voices are heard off the stage. 
A half minute's attempt to imitate the sounds 
they produce will give one the quinsy. The 
throat is contracted until the veins stand out 
like whipcords and the blood seems ready to 
burst from every pore in the actors face. 
Then the eyes roll, individually and indepen- 
dently, up and down, or north and south, or 
east and west, at the same time. The iris disap- 
pears entirely. This is done especially when 
the eye wriggler wishes to demonstrate that 
he is bold and bad. 

The bearing of the actors cast for kings 
and queens brings to mind the old miracle 
plays. To walk Uke ordinary mortals^would 
not do for royalty or for personages of any 
sort. They must strut like a German recruit 
breaking in. It is something to remember 
the entrance of a Chinese Emperor as he 
comes down the aisle through the audience. 
At each step his foot rises quite to the 
level of his chin while his revolving eyes ap- 
pear to be two inches in diameter. All this 
seems childish enough to ruin the effect of 
176 



SHIBAYA TO YAKUSHA. 

the most excellent acting, but it does not. 

Japanese actors die hard — on the stage. It 
is appalling to see how long they last. They 
stagger about, still slashing at each other, 
after they are shot as full of arrows as a por- 
cupine is full of quills. The first arrow would 
have done for them anywhere but in the 
theatre. Stage blood is over everything; but 
the audience delights in gory scenes, and the 
actors must stick it out. Arms and legs are 
lopped off. The wounded roll over and disap- 
pear while a "dummy" limb appears through 
the floor and twitches about the stage in a 
way not pleasant to weak nerves. 

The lime light has not come into general 
use as yet. Instead, a black-hooded mute, 
with a bamboo pole, at the end of which is a 
lighted candle, moves about with much agil- 
ity and illumines the chief actor's counten- 
ance by means of the sputtering dip. To the 
• stranger this jet black elf is a whole show in 
himself and a serious distraction from the 
drama, but after a while he ceases to attract 
notice. He is forgotten and the actor holds 
the entire attention. 

Another distraction is the orchestra, and a 
dismal one it is to the uninitiated. To the 
177 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

average American a dozen hungry and indig- 
nant cats would do as well. This orchestra 
usually is at one end of the stage, behind a 
screen, which conceals the appalling physiog- 
nomies of the members, but does not add 
harmony to the sounds. The *'music" and 
"singing" continue without a pause all the 
time the curtain is up. The songs are inde- 
scribable. The tone is something between 
the squeal of a pig and the wail of a lost soul, 
but it has a fitness, one discovers after sev- 
eral hearings, especially during the blood-and- 
thunder acts. When a battle is on this discord 
is quite in harmony with the interminable 
slaughter. 

The general appearance of the Japanese 
stage is much the same as the stage in an 
American theatre. The stage itself revolves, 
but otherwise the scenery is managed about 
as it is in this country. The actors, when 
they die, are attended to by the hooded elfs, 
who see them safely away behind blankets. 
The audience does not applaud by hand- 
clapping; it shouts the actor's name. 

It is a comfortable audience, with any 
amount of time. Plays begin at eight o'clock 
in the morning and continue until seven in 

178 



SHIBAYA TO YAKUSHA. 

the evening. Different theatres give per- 
formances at different hours, however. In 
some places the doors open only in the even- 
ing. The floor of an empty theatre looks like 
a checker board. There are no chairs. The 
entire seating space is partitioned off into 
squares by means of railing about a foot above 
the soft-matted floor. A square holds a half- 
dozen spectators. Generally they have their 
tea and lunch with them, including plenty of 
sake, carried in gourds. 

Between the acts they visit about the house 
and exchange sake cups. Occasionally actors 
come down to see them, and always receive 
a present, just as geisha do. All sorts of 
hawkers of food and drink run about on the 
railings, offering their wares to the specta- 
tors. Smoking goes on all through the per- 
formance. Occasionally a spectator curls up 
for a nap to carry him through a portion of 
the play he does not care for. 

When an act is ending the curtain man 
announces it by a nerve-shattering racket, 
made with two hard pieces of wood which he 
beats together. As the curtain falls all the 
children in the place rush for the stage and 
have a merry game of tag. Often they crawl 
179 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

behind to see what is going on. No one in- 
terferes with them nor shows the least an- 
noyance at their pranks. The stage is theirs 
until the clatter man sends the curtain up 
again. 

Japanese theatrical methods are far ahead 
of the methods that obtain in China. The 
Chinese theatre is familiar to some extent to 
Americans, for one may see it wherever there 
is a Chinese colony, notably in San Francisco, 
Portland, Or., and New York city; but the 
Japanese theatre has stayed at home. A good 
Japanese troupe, aided by a clear libretto and 
intelligible notes, would make a decided hit 
in this country if the manager knew his busi- 
ness. 

At present there is little differentiation in 
the American mind between things Japanese 
and Chinese. This annoys the subjects of 
the Mikado, for they are not related to the 
people they recently conquered. Neither in 
blood nor in language is there any connec- 
tion whatever, except that Japan has borrow- 
ed from the Chinese many words and written 
characters. 

Foreigners in Japan enjoy the theatre; but 
in China hardly. There is no way of stopping 
1 80 



SHIBAYA TO YAKUSHA. 

a Chinese play. Once it is fairly started it 
runs until the theatre is burned down or the 
actors die of old age. Many Japanese plays, 
however, are of the same structure and dur- 
ation as English plays. Where the theatre is 
open all day the play is broken in two, and 
between the two sections a sketch, something 
like a curtain raiser, fills in. 

On the Japanese stage dead men are taken 
off by attendants. They do not jump up and 
trot off in the merry Chinese fashion. The 
orchestra in Japan is not all tomtom, either; 
nor is it on the stage, mixed up with the 
actors. Indeed, some of the performances 
on the Samisen are full of life and exceeding- 
ly clever. Japanese scenery is well-nigh per- 
fect, and the revolving stage, of which the 
Chinese know nothing, saves much time. 

Recently, too, in Japan, mixed troupes are 
allowed. Men and women may appear on 
the stage together. This is not allowed in 
China. It is in no great favor as yet in Japan, 
because the old ideas are not gone yet, and 
Japanese plays are most realistic. Perhaps 
the appearance of women in companies with 
men will curtail this realism. 

Since the war the theatre has prospered 
i8i 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

mightily and prices have gone up. Still, two 
dollars is not a great sum to pay for twelve 
hour's use of a good box and a chance to see 
much that is ludicrous, but also, much that is 
admirable and instructive. 



RIO. 



R I O. 

The pace of the gilded youth in Japan is 
quite as rapid as it is in other countries. In 
fact, it is so fast that, as Walter Besant once 
said of a man who was running away from a 
bear, **it was manifest to the most casual ob- 
server that the primary effort was speed." 

The Prince of Sendai set such a pace in 
the days of the Shogunate that the Court re- 
monstrated, and told him, if he had money to 
burn, he had better burn it to some advan- 
tage to the state. Thereupon he ordered the 
Prince to dig a moat through Surugadai, the 
highest hill in Yeddo. This moat completed 
a sort of spiral canal around the Shogun's 
palace. It took 3,000 men two years to dig 
this ditch, and is known as **Sendai's Sorrow." 

Sendai's chief exploit, one that brought him 
national notoriety, was hiring the entire Yo- 
shiwara and closing the gates while he enter- 
ained his friends. The Yoshiwara is a com- 
munity by itself on the outskirts of the city, 

18s 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

and contains some 1,900 geisha and other 
persons whose Hves, so long as they remain 
there, are dedicated to joy and sin. To hire 
the whole Waldorf-Astoria in order to take a 
nap would be on a par financially with this 
act of Sendai's. 

Sendai liked the ** no" dance, which is, in- 
deed, perfect in its daint\^ grace; but, like 
classic music, one cannot learn to appreciate 
it in an afternoon. A long course of training 
is necessar}'. This training is expensive when 
one persists in it on the scale that Sendai fol- 
lowed. He delighted to look over his sake 
cup while 500 beautifully robed geisha pos- 
tured before him in rhythmic motion, like a 
field of flowers swaying in the wind. 

He gave great dances on all the festal days, 
sometimes on a flotilla in the river and some- 
times beneath the cherr}' blossoms along the 
banks of Sumida Gawa. He would hire a 
theatre, with a company of actors, and give a 
continuous performance for a week, with the 
little square pens in the pit filled \\4th singing 
girls, all banqueting. 

The tea-houses that he patronized grew 
rich, for his custom was to order ** the best 
in the world, and all there is of it." He would 
186 



RIO. 

have broken the Satsuma dishes off which he 
fed if he had not been too thoroughly an 
artist. 

He ate kami-boku, made of the little kernel 
of flesh taken from the head of tai, a kind of 
perch much esteemed by Japanese epicures. 
Court nobles would have relished the bodies, 
but Sendai threw these away. He ate moun- 
tain-sparrow soup, that even the Shogun had 
only once a year, when he offered food to the 
spirits of his ancestors. 

With all this he seems to have kept his 
health, owing, perhaps, to his practice of 
fencing with the long two-handed bamboo 
swords, that are popular to this day. The 
exercise is tougher than either broadsword 
or rapier, for which reason the fencers need 
well-padded armor. No European has a 
chance at sword-play against a Japanese ex- 
pert and this two-handed weapon. 

Of the Prince of Sendai it was said that he 
could draw his sword and take off an enemy's 
head in a single stroke. Of course, being a 
great swell, he had blades that were worth 
many times their weight in gold. One could 
not be a swell without owning good swords, 
for "the sword was the soul of the samurai," 

187 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

Sendai, like others in his class, went in for 
archery, too, and could shoot while standing 
in his stirrups or from under his horse's neck. 
Archery is still a gentleman's pastime in 
Japan; likewise polo, with scoop-nets instead 
of mallets. It is rough work, but not as fierce 
as the game played at Newport, at Hempstead 
or at Prospect Park. 

Netting for ducks is more popular than 
gunning for them among the young bloods 
of Japan. A hill over which ducks fly at night 
and morning is pegged out till it looks as 
though covered with mining claims. Each 
post bears its owner's name and indicates his 
stand. The numbers are changed at inter- 
vals to give each net-man a fair chance. He 
uses a net about eight feet square, which 
hangs on a pole something as a banner, but 
which is rigged so as to keep it spread. When 
the ducks begin to come over the pole is 
tossed into the air, and, if well launched, will 
intercept a bird and bring it to the ground. 

Tea-drinking hardly would seem to come 
under the head of a sport or to appeal to a 
man that led a fast, fierce life. But Sendai 
spent enough at it to make a dozen experts 
in its ceremonies independent for life. 
i88 



RIO. 

Chamberlain says the art of drinking tea 
has gone through three stages — medico-relig- 
ious, luxurious and esthetic. In Japan the 
Zen sect of Buddhists used tea in certain of 
their ceremonies, because it kept them awake. 
A priest named Eisai, who wished to reform 
a youthful Shogun who drank too much sake 
and sham-shiu, got him interested in tea by 
elaborating a diverting set of rules for drink- 
ing it. When the ceremony was well estab- 
lished in the august favor the old priest gave 
the Shogun tracts on the beneficial effects of 
cca, how it regulated the whole system and 
drove out devils — might, indeed, be preferred 
to the gold cure. 

Eisai worked in a good deal of religion 
along with his tea, but the ceremony of drink- 
ing grew more and more worldly, until it was 
all luxury and no religion. The swells drank 
tea daily in gorgeous apartments, hung with 
brocade and damask, where they burned 
precious perfumes and served rare fishes and 
strange birds with sweetmeats and wine, and 
in time lost their fortunes and themselves in 
an extravagance of etiquette. 

The rules ordained that all the things rich 
and rare that were exhibited were to be given 
189 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

to the singing and dancing girls, troops of 
whom were present to aid the company in its 
carousal. Vast inheritances disappeared, but 
while the custom lasted it gave a great stim- 
ulus to art. 



UTA. 



UTA. 

Gaku is a Japanese word, which in the dic- 
tionaries is translated as music. If you ever 
hear any gaku you will wonder what is the 
matter with the dictionaries. You will sus- 
pect their trustworthiness ever after and con- 
sult them with hesitancy. 

Gaku should be translated, "a series of ir- 
regular and disconnected vocal squeaks ac- 
companied on strings out of tune and inter- 
spersed with wads of noise." That would be 
comprehensive and exact, except when the 
vocal squeaks are omitted. Without the 
squeaks gaku is the same in kind — unqualified 
and wilful discord, but not so much of it. 

The dictionaries would have you believe 
also that the vocal squeaks are singing. They 
say that uta means song, that utau means to 
sing and that "o uta utau nasai" means hon- 
orable song to sing condescend — i. e., please 
sing a song. That is pretty poor guessing, 
even for an English-Japanese dictionary. "O 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

uta utau nasai" should be translated, * 'bring 
me some cotton" (for my . ears being, of 
course, understood.) With your ears well 
stuffed you may listen to gaku without going 
mad. Otherwise it is difficult. 

There are many kinds of gaku in Japan, 
each of which is worse than any of the others, 
with one exception that may be made oc- 
casionally in favor of classical gaku. Classical 
gaku is esoteric, so very esoteric at some of 
the Shinto festivals that only the motions of 
producing discord are made and the soul- 
piercing uta is left out as well. These are 
the only times you will not desife cotton. 

When court musicians, the most classical 
of all gaku folk in Japan, do break out into 
sound the air is torn with distress. There is 
something in it to suggest the March of the 
Conquerors as they advance between the 
parallel lines of dead, and also a tidal wave 
full of cats, pawing helplessly in the foam, 
clamoring for succor. 

Yet all this pleases the Japanese ear so that 
the more discordant of the gakunin acquire 
fame and are talked about. But the gaku 
itself never attracts notice. No one discusses 
it; no one cares who composed it. Classical 
194 



UTA. 

gaku is a thousand years old, likely two thou- 
sand, for it came over from China back some- 
where in the sixth century and has not grown 
better ever since. No one knows how long 
it afflicted China before leaving for the Land 
of the Rising Sun. 

It is no wonder that now and again a gaku- 
nin dies of heart failure or of congestion of 
the brain. He strains so in squeezing out the 
uta that his neck swells and the veins stand 
out as though it were bound with clothesline. 
His eyes are bloodshot and his face a dull 
brown purple, while he growls and gags and 
yawps until he reaches the convulsion point. 

Then he unlimbers his neck and thrusts it 
out like a chicken reaching for a bug, and the 
blood receding leaves his face the color of - 
washed-out leather. It is estimated that with 
each word he expends enough energy to 
wind a Waterbury watch. 

When several gakunin unite in crime they 
pay no attention to key nor to harmony, for 
such things do not concern gaku. They do, 
however, keep in common time together, the 
only time the Japanese wot of. Each strains 
and exhausts himself independently of the 
others in any way he can produce discord. 
195 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

As there is no notation for any but the clas- 
sical gaku, all must be handed down by word 
of mouth and learned from the living teacher. 
Wee girls sit for -hours each day before the 
instructor — usually a woman past the flower 
of her youth and no longer in demand in the 
tea-houses — and practice at the *'break," 
the point just between the lower and higher 
register, where all the possible raspiness of 
her little voice can be brought to complete 
development. 

All Japanese uta are rendered at the 
"break." This is a cruel surprise to the for- 
eigner when he first hears it, for nothing 
further from his expectations well could be 
when the dairtty maid sits down before him, 
with a winsome smile, her samisen resting 
on her knee and her taper fingers playing up 
and down the strings. He is utterly unpre- 
pared for the series of weird, discordant 
notes, which sound more like an incantation 
to "blue devils" than what the interpreter 
assures you it is — a love song. 

In the theatres the gaku and uta^ continue 

throughout the performance — that is, in some 

of the best houses — from early morn till dewy 

eve. The gakunin sit in boxes behind screens 

196 



UTA. 

at each end of the stage. They are marvel- 
ously old, with necks like camels and India 
rubber faces. 

Nothing like. them exists anywhere else on 
earth. 



GEISHA. 



GEISHA. 

This was some little time ago. Gardner 
was in New York City and had been to see 
" The Geisha" at Daly's. He thought it a 
pretty affair, but had chuckled to himself sev- 
eral times at points the rest of the audience 
thought touchingly sentimental. There were 
half a dozen Japanese in the box next to him 
and they chuckled, too. After the play he had 
some friends to supper over at Del's and ex- 
patiated to them as follows: 

•* If those Geisha up at Daly's were real 
geisha we might get them to take charge of 
the party for us. All we'd need to do would 
be to tell them what we wanted, and it would 
be done to the Queen's taste. We shouldn't 
need to raise a finger. 

" Yes," he continued, "this little party would 
be managed perfectly without a thought from 
us, if we had some of the sweet Japanese 
singers. No one would think of giving even 
a dinner without them in Japan, whether it 

20I 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

was to be in a public teahouse or in a private 
dwelling. They are indispensable. They 
make everything go successfully. The mission 
of the geisha is to make life merry. Her 
whole education is to that end, 

"She can dance and sing and play on all 
sorts of musical instruments; she knows the 
best stories and the latest jokes; she is quick 
at repartee; the games she doesn't know are 
those that have not yet been invented. She 
is as graceful and as frolicsome as a kitten, 
and as beautiful as — well, as the Daly geisha; 
and her manners are simply exquisite. 

**Only dead folk can withstand the geisha's 
charms, and it is doubtful about them. Her 
mirth is the best of tonics. It will mend one 
when anything is the matter with one's health. 
They say over there that she cures everything 
but diseases of the heart. These she is likely 
to aggravate, and she doesn't need more than 
half a chance, either! 

"In Japan every one is always entertaining 
some one. Few things happen that do not 
demand a feast. Consequently the geisha is 
seldom out of sight — that is, literally speak- 
ing. She appears at the festal place soon 
after the earliest arrivals, or about two hours 
202 



GEISHA. 

before dinner is announced. It is the custom 
in her country for guests to come ahead of 
time instead of behind time. 

**You get your first sight of her as she bows 
low at the threshold, her hands palm down 
on the floor before her and her face pressed 
close against them. As she bows she says 
*Omina sama gomen kudasai,* which means, 
'Honorable Mr. and Mrs. Everybody, august 
pardon deign.* 'Ha irashai,* call out some of 
the guests as they look up from the chess 
boards or tiny packs of hana cards with which 
they have been playing. Irashai means wel- 
come, and the geisha enter to take possession 
of the teapots, serve the guests and 'jolly' ev- 
ery one. Their entrance is not the least bit 
wabbly, as one might think from the pretty 
performance at Mr. Daly's theatre. The robes 
are quite too long for any gait like that. Daly's 
winsome lasses must have gotten their ideas 
of the Japanese foot motions from a study of 
native women dressed in European style. 
Japanese women do walk queerly when their 
feet are incased in high-heeled boots. Their 
gracefulness is gone then, the glide that holds 
their sandals on becomes a shuffle, and the 
inward swing of the right foot caused by the 
203 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

side pull of the kimono, which clings so close- 
ly to the figure, develops into pigeon toe. 

"When a geisha has served tea all round 
and had a dainty *fling' at every one, she 
glides off to the kitchen to see that the sake, 
the sashime, the kwashi and other things are 
ready. She has an artist's eye, and can serve 
raw fish — which sounds anything but appetiz- 
ing to Westerners — so daintily on a lacquered 
tray that you've simply got to try a little. 

*'As soon as the portions are arranged she 
glides back to the guest room with china 
bottles full of hot rice beer. She puts bowls 
of water full of tiny cups at intervals about 
the room before the guests, who are arranged 
along the border of the apartment. To each 
one she offers a cup, and then pours out the 
sake, with a bow, saying: *Please condescend 
to drink one full.* With the wine come kwashi, 
that is, different kind of cakes, which she 
serves on little oblong brazen dishes. 

*'This seems like beginning with the des- 
sert, but it is quite the proper way in Japan. 

"While the guests are busy with this 'starter' 

of kwashi and sake, the geisha glides to the 

door and puts on her evening robes. She 

doesn't go out of the room to do this, for she 

204 



GEISHA. 

is a lightning-change artist, and as the day- 
time garments are sliding from one shoulder 
the clinging folds of the evening gown are 
upon the other, and with a bit of a shrug and 
a wriggle — she changes from a thrush to 
a nightingale. 

**An assistant binds the robe with a broad 
sash, tied in a square knot behind (which, by 
the way, is the original bustle), and she comes 
purring among the guests once more. 

"She brings trays of lacquered bowls and 
china cups, with soups and fish of many kinds, 
until before each guest there is a fair founda* 
tion for an art museum. Then she brings 
out her samisen, a three-stringed square-head 
banjo, and plucking with her bachi tunes it 
to the weirdest key that sounds were ever 
known to give. The sad melody of waters 
beating on a foreign shore as the surf sprite 
sings of loneliness — such is the geisha's music 
and her song. As she plays her younger 
sister dances. Not as we dance here, nor as 
any of Mr. Daly's geisha dance. There is 
little motion, but much harmony of line, as 
she turns about and postures and wields her 
fan so deftly that it seems to hover in the air 
as if it were a moth above a candle light. 
205 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

**Her posing tells more clearly than any 
words might do the story of her elder sister's 
song. It is a love story always. It couldn't 
be anything else, when a geisha sings it. It 
is not *Chon Kino,' however, unless she is a 
treaty-port geisha, and a cheap geisha at that; 
for *Chon Kino' is sung in dives only, and 
except in treaty ports there are no dives in 
the whole country. 'Chon Kino' is sung for 
sailors, the natives call them 'Damyo'eyes 
San' by a class of girls unknown in Japan be- 
fore foreigners arrived, and its origin is not 
Japanese at all, but was taught by the early 
Dutch to their temporary Nagasaki wives. 

**It is really part of a game of forfeit, after 
the manner of 'Simon says thumbs up.' The 
usual forfeit after 'Yokohama Nagasaki, Ho- 
kodate. Hoi!* is to take off 'one piece of cloth.' 
This forfeiting continues until there isn't any- 
thing more to take off. Whoever has the 
most on at the end of the game wins. 

Hillary Bell is quite right in his opinion of 
the tea houses of the treaty ports and of the 
geisha who pose therein. He says that those 
geisha would make a good man blush. But 
don't think for a minute that the genuine 
geisha — those of inland Japan — are not as 
206 



GEISHA. 

honest and pure-hearted as any woman in the 
world. It is a mighty serious mistake to sup- 
pose that * 'geisha" is synonymous for easy 
virtue. 

''Geisha dancing is often pantomime, and 
where a half dozen of them dance together, 
they are 'a whole show in themselves.' They 
would be delighted with their counterparts, 
as Mr. Daly presents them, but they would 
be amused, too, at the funny differences. 
Fluffy hair is not Japanese, petticoats are not 
worn under kimono; high heels would play 
sad havoc with the delicate tatami that cover 
Japanese floors; waraji, or rough straw san- 
dals are not worn in the house except in the 
kitchen. Geisha either go barefoot or in socks 
reaching just above the ankle, fastened with 
broad flat hooks; these socks or tabi as they 
are called have a pocket for the big toe like 
the thumb pocket in a mitten. 

"Real geisha never hug each other nor 
even hold hands — much less kiss. There is 
no such personal contact in Japan, except be- 
tween parents and young children. Geisha 
do not cross their hands over the breast. 
When they bow they bend over as though 
giving a back for a game of leapfrog. The 
207 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

hands are pressed against the knees and the 
spine is horizontal. 

**And another thing, conspicuous by its ab- 
sence at Daly's, it would be a sad time for the 
dear little girls if they hadn't even one smoke 
in a whole evening! Geisha carry pipes of 
gold and silver bronze, with which they enjoy 
ippuka, one whiff, from time to time taking a 
pinch of mild tobacco from the leather pouch 
each one has slipped into her obi. And the 
idea of a public wedding would throw them 
into convulsions. Weddings, as we under- 
stand them, are unknown in Japan. Marriage 
is purely a family affair. There is no relig- 
ious and no civil ceremony. The bride goes 
to the bridegroom's home, goes through a 
formal pretense of drinking sansan kudo, 
nine cups of wine, with her future master, 
and there's the end of it! The census man 
will mark her change of residence, which is 
all the notice the civil authorities take. 

<*It would surprise geisha, too, to know that 
they could be bought and sold so easily. A 
geisha is usually indentured to a teacher when 
she is young. Or, perhaps, the teacher pays 
the parents for a release and then adopts the 
child. But even then she is not owned. Her 
208 



GEISHA. 

contract, if she is indentured, stipulates a sum 
on payment of which she is to be released. 
If she is adopted and later runs away and 
marries, there is no chance to recover her." 



TURAMPU. 



TURAMPU. 

«*Hitotsu, futatsu, mitsu, yotsu, itsutsu — aka 
bakari," said Prince Sakusama as he counted 
a straight flush, beginning with the ace of 
hearts, and laid it on the low ebony table in 
one of the famous tea houses onSumida 
Gawa. 

"I win?" he asked as he paused a moment 
and looked around at his companions. **Ara- 
gato de gozalmasu"— the chips and Peach 
Blossom, too. * 'Shall I put her in the kitty?" 

"If Your Highness did so," said a young 
baron who had just returned with an Embassy 
from London, "all of us would play to lose, 
for as Your Highness has deigned to declare 
the rules of the game give the kitty to the 
player that is hit hardest. To play poker to 
lose would be to debauch its pristine purity," 

"We must never do that, Baron, surely. 
Let us play a round of jacks." 

He clapped his hands, and from the far in- 
terior of the tea house, beyond many parti- 
213 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

tions of paper sliding doors, an answering 
*'Hai tadaima," long drawn, soft and musical 
floated in, telling the prince that his sum- 
mons had been heard. A moment later and 
the paper doors at the end of the room slid 
noiselessly in their grooves and disclosed a 
bunch of daintiness on the tatami just out- 
side. 

It was Peach Blossom, kneeling low, with 
her face almost touching the soft bamboo 
matting, and her tiny hands pressed palms 
down together just before her. 

She besought His Highness to deign to 
pardon her audacious effrontery in respond- 
ing to the august summons and begged that 
if he would condescend to command so un- 
worthy a piece of stupid mud as she he would 
deign to consider her ready to receive the 
augustly honorable orders. 

*'Sake," said the Prince, and as Momo-no- 
Hana closed the sliding door and pattered 
away for the hot rice beer, His Highness tore 
the cover from a fresh pack of cards and be- 
gan to shuffle them. The Baron cut and the 
game proceeded. 

Five better poker faces were never gather- 
ed about a table. There was not a sign of 
214 



TURAMPU. 

nerves in any one of them. Each player 
skinned his hand and decided whether to 
draw or to pass or to stand pat, but never a 
sign of his thoughts was given in his coun- 
tenance. Each had the expression of a door 
knob. Good hands and bad hands come to a 
door knob, but one can tell nothing of them 
by looking at it. 

These five men in the tea house on the 
bank of the Sumida Gawa, which flows 
through the heart of Tokio, bore some of the 
best known names in the Japanese Empire. 
Three of them had been daimiyo and had 
owned provinces as absolutely as anything 
may be owned in this world. Their revenues 
had been counted by the 100,000 koku. They 
had lived in royal state, each with his castles 
and his army and board of councilors. 

But Commodore Perry had changed all 
that, and now these men were living in the 
capital with one-tenth their former incomes, 
and no one to support or to worry about out- 
side their personal households. 

Of the other two His Highness, Prince Sak- 

usama, was of the Shogun's family, which 

had ruled the Empire until the restoration, in 

1868, and the other was of the samurai class. 

215 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

His fathers had been fighting men for full 
2,000 years, and his family records showed. 
He had studied abroad, was a graduate of 
Harvard, an M. A. of Oxford and a Ph. D. of 
Heidelberg. It was said that he had carved 
his name on the face of a German student 
who had been so unlucky as to challenge 
him. He was a vice minister now, and had 
married the daughter of a merchant with 
money to burn. Before 1871 he would have 
been sentenced to harakiri for doing that. All 
five had learned to play abroad. They had 
been together in a Japanese club in London 
the presiding genius of which was the Con- 
sul General, who knew the great American 
game as well as a Kentucky colonel. 

Now that they were at home again, they 
were only too willing to meet wherever a 
chance afforded, and the tea house of the 
Rising Moon knew them well. Its mistress 
was glad to see them always, for the players 
and their friends were a hungry and thirsty 
lot, and did not spare the kitty, out of which 
the chief loser had to pay all expenses. 

The round of jacks was under way when 
Mono-no-Hana came with the sake. When 
sake is ordered in a tea house food is served 
216 



TURAMPU. 

with it, for the host knows well the evil ef- 
fects of drinking on an empty stomach. So 
Omomo San was followed by a procession of 
toylike darlings, each with a dainty morsel on 
china dishes and lacquered trays. All these 
bearers of nectar and ambrosia were geisha 
and indentured to masters of various geisha 
homes. Rumor had it that for certain sums 
of money, doubtless much exaggerated, the 
indenture papers of the more bewitching of 
these geisha had changed hands, so that the 
sweet singers were come under the guardian- 
ship of men of noble birth, who in the olden 
days would have cut in two the master of a 
geisha house and been accountable to no one. 

The last jackpot of the last round bore out 
this rumor, for when the last call was made 
and His Highness had reckoned up the con- 
tents he found Cherry Bud, Chrysanthemum 
and Plum Blossom were added to his list, 
besides Little Pony and One Thousand Joys. 
He had won the whole procession. 

Looking out over the slow Sumida and 
watching the house boats with their gay paper 
lanterns as they were poled along the shores 
in the light of the rising moon, he dipped his 
sake cup in the basin and handed it to him 
217 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

who had lost just too little to be entitled to 
the kitty, saying: 

*'Kono tsugi anata oumbai ii desho 
Dozo ippai onomu na sai." 
Which means, being literally interpreted: 
**Next time your honorable luck good prob- 
ably will be. 

Graciously condescend a cupful of sake to 
imbibe.'* 



SYONARA. 



SYONARA. 

Japanese callers come early and stay late — 
particularly if you, the callee, are a foreigner. 
They like to look at you. They are easy 
enough to entertain, too, if you do not mind 
being stared at. But they never go. At least, 
no one but Dara Santara ever went, and he 
did so only once. He could not do so again, 
for he did not come back. This achievement 
(which was partly ours) emphasizes the rule. 
Here is the story. 

Dara Santara was in the habit of calling on 
us on Nichiyobi regularly. Nichiyobi is the 
seventh day of the Japanese week and cor- 
responds with our Sunday, though it has 
nothing to do with religion. It is rather jol- 
lier and happier than other days, that is all. 

Gardner and I had enjoyed it in peace and 
restfulness until Dara discovered us. It was 
our home day. We were satisfied to be by 
ourselves. It had been a comfort in anticipa- 
tion and a delight when it arrived. But Dara 

221 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

changed all that. He was the nephew of our 
next-door neighbor, a retired naval captain, 
who, though a cripple, was courteous and 
kindly in the extreme. Moreover, he spoke 
a little English, which made him the more 
agreeable, whereas Dara did not know more 
than three words. 

We were still snoozing on our futon v/hen 
Dara made call number one, and he had 
bowed twelve times before we had gotten the 
makura kinks out of our necks sujfficiently to 
bow back at him. Makura are excellent pil- 
lows, once one is used to them; but that takes 
years. Usotsuki, a young student who inter- 
preted for us, said Dara was extremely sorry 
to disturb us. Dara's sorrow was manifested 
by a smile that divided his countenance into 
hemiphizes. Our sorrow was as intense but 
different. 

We told Kintaro to make Dara comfortable 
and to excuse us for a moment. Then we 
rolled out of our nemaki and into our boiling 
bath. When we came out we were red, and 
breakfast was ready. Dara sat with us on his 
shinbones and heels, with his feet crossed 
under him, and nearly added another inch to 
his smile in an effort to eat an olive with his 



SYONARA. 

knife. We did not care much for olives for 
breakfast, but Usotsuki had put them on 
the table and Dara seemed to like them. 

Generally, too, we discarded knives and 
forks and ate with hashi, like the natives, but 
this morning we brought out the American 
implements, thinking they might interest our 
guest. They did. He ate everything, even 
butter, which is not usual among the Japan- 
ese. Indeed, he managed to spear the balls 
floating in the bowl of iced water and swal- 
lowed them with an indrawn hiss, like the 
sound of a small skyrocket. 

Dara ate until there was nothing left but 
the utensils and a bottle of tabasco sauce. He 
wept over that. 

When Dara had done complimenting us he 
smiled and said, *'0 gotso sama." From Usot- 
suki's explanation earlier in the day we judged 
from Dara's smile that he had a stomach 
ache. We were not surprised; we were only 
mistaken. 

*'He say very glad too much eatings," Kin- 
taro explained. 

"We did not know he was coming or we 
might have prepared," Gardner explained. 
This seemed to please Dara greatly when it 
223 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

was translated to him, and he said he would 
come again next Nichiyobi. Gardner told 
him to come any day he liked, but he replied 
that official duties hindered him except on 
that one day. 

Then he sat and sat, we the meanwhile 
wondering what to do for him. We showed 
him all our American photographs. He was 
interested, and did us the honor to ask for 
the only pictures of our families that we pos- 
sessed. He smiled when we said, "No," but 
he had a puzzled look about the eyes. 

Then we showed him some books on Japan, 
ov^er which he chuckled like an infant. After 
that we took some snapshots of him. The 
minute he faced the camera his smile turned 
to haughtiness and he looked like a brazen 
image, which is the proper Japanese po§e; 
but when he saw the negative in our dark 
room a little later he was tickled. We prom- 
ised to send him proofs in a few days, and he 
bowed and smiled and stayed. 

Kintaro announced tiffin — always an elab- 
orate meal with us on Nichiyobi. Dara stay- 
ed, and was as active as at breakfast. His 
compliments were loud and long. We were 
fond of his uncle, so we said nothing, but we 
224 



SYONARA. 

were eager for "our Sunday." We wanted to 
lounge and to stroll about the gardens of 
the old temple in which we lived and 
over into the older temple we were using 
as a school house. We wanted to chat 
together of things at home, to finish our 
letters and be at rest. But there were none 
of these things for us this day, nor the follow- 
ing Nichiyobi, either, for he remembered his 
promise, which we had forgotten altogether. 

That second day of visitation was not a 
keen delight. Then came a third and a fourth. 
What should we do? We could not be rude. 
Not for a year's rent would we have disturbed 
that kindly gentleman, the captain. We did 
not wish to flee. We wanted to have our 
home to ourselves this one day in the week. 

We must resort to strategy. And, in fact, 
to use an Americanism, we put up a job on 
Dara Santara. Though outwardly polite and 
friendly, we had concocted and concealed 
within our hearts a wicked scheme. It was 
done in this wise: 

As every one knows, sake is the national 

drink of Japan. It is a pale, sherry-colored 

liquor or beer, made of rice. It is joyous and 

harmless, though exhilarating to the Japan- 

225 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

ese. Foreign liquors, like foreign tobacco, 
are too strong for them. Our friend did not 
know this, however. 

After tiffin No. 4 we tried some American 
cigarettes on Dara, which he smoked until 
he was a little dizzy. Tabaka yota — tobacco 
drunk, the natives call the sensation. Then 
we gave him some of our *'sake," highly 
sweetened. He had a curiosity to taste the 
foreign product, and, like all Japanese, he 
liked plenty of sweetness. 

We loaded his tumbler with syrups, but 
also with liquors and, I fear, nearly three 
fingers of "fire water," for it was a tall English 
glass, holding almost a pint. Our glasses held 
a mixture of the same in color, but innocent 
of dynamite. 

Our deception was base but successful. 
Dara smacked his lips and smiled half way 
round his head over the first swallow. His 
face reddened as he continued to imbibe but 
he persisted with the courage of a sentenced 
feudal lord in the days of hara kiri. By the 
time he had drunk all his head stuck up 
through the top of his kimono like a poppy 
and his smile was saggy at the ends. 

He murmured, **Taihenuroshi, gotso sama, 
226 



SYONARA. 

gomen na sai, syonara," and then sailed 
sweetly, with many curves, out through our 
garden, his kimono following like a comet's 
tail and his geta playing leap frog and filling 
the air with their wooden clamor. 

Though we have felt guilty ourselves, we 
have never blamed Dara Santara that he did 
not return. 



NIHON NO ICHIBAN 

SHIWAI JIMBUTSU. 



NIHON NO ICHIBAN 

SHIWAI JIMBUTSU. 



Kono Hito was the closest man in Japan. 
He lived near a temple less than one hun- 
dred ri from Kanazawa on the west coast. If 
he had been further from the temple he 
would have been just as close, but he might 
not have discovered the fact to the world, nor 
have wasted away on account of his unlovely 
trait. 

Kono Hito was a farmer. He raised rice. 
To do so he had to have water, and plenty of 
it, thousands of tsubo, as the Japanese say. A 
tsubo is the size of two mats, or thirty-six 
square feet. He owned over fifty fields, ly- 
ing side by side without fences separating 
them. Only a low ridge of earth marked 
the boundary of the field, and this, when the 
rice had grown a bit, was quite out of sight. 
At the time of planting these ridges are 
mushy, but at harvest time they are dry and 
231 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

hard, so that one could walk on them easily 
if he has occasion. The way Kono did was 
to throw seed rice, that is, rice kernels in the 
shell, over the surface of the tiny ponds, 
where it sprouted and wove into a tangled 
mat of deep, rich green. When the rice 
blades were six inches long and had well- 
formed roots he would disentangle them, 
and, gathering them in clusters, would plant 
them in the mud, at two-foot intervals, along 
rows parallel and two feet apart. This made 
the rows regular, like the lines of a checker 
board, with a bunch of rice wherever two 
lines met. The board itself was all water at 
first, and had to remain water until nearly 
time for harvest, for Kono Hito grew swamp 
rice only. He said there was no money in 
upland rice. It was too hard and would not 
sell for the cost of growing it. 

A drought, therefore, was about as bad a 
thing as could happen to Kono Hito. He 
must have water or go to the money lenders, 
and once he went to them there would be no 
end of going until they had possession of his 
rice fields. That is the fate of those who 
borrow, as Kono Hito knew well. So he 
built dams above his fields, to make reser- 
232 



NIHON NO ICHIBAN SHIWAI JIMBUTSU. 

voirs; he dug ditches from one field to the 
other, and he observed the Buddhist fast 
days. In spite of all this, however, his crops 
turned yellow earlier than those of Sono 
Hito, the rice grower on the opposite side of 
the highway that ran between their paddy 
fields to the temple and beyond. 

" Komaru ne," said Kono Hito, as he came 
along the road in his jin-riki-sha one day. 
" Doshimashoka," But though he spoke to 
himself of trouble, and asked himself what 
he should do, he did not talk out loud. He 
kept more fast days, worked harder in his 
sloppy fields, built tiny shrines like dolls* 
houses at his reservoirs, and brought the 
household economy down to such a fine 
point that Okamusan, his wife, dared not lose 
so much as a grain of rice in a month. But 
with all his prayers and his skimping, he had 
not water enough. His fields were brown 
when Sono Hito's were yet green. " Hontoni 
komaru r* Trouble, indeed! 

Sono Hito, the meanwhile, was not worry- 
ing. He was a patriarch in the ** Home of 
Happy Husbandmen" and never had bad 
years, ever though he kept few fasts and was 
not more than half careful of his reservoirs. 
233 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

A lot of folk worked for him, however, and 
without knowing it, but they were glad to do 
so. 

They were good Buddhists of the Hoganji 
sect, passing daily to the grand old temple 
overlooking the sea. They offered alms to 
.Buddha, and ere they offered they washed 
themselves, as good folk do before they wor- 
ship. Sono Hito, of course, knew this, for he 
went to the temple himself sometimes, and 
took the preparatory bath just as the others 
did. 

It was while he was taking one of these 
baths that the idea that resulted in Kono 
Hito*s ** komaru" occurred to Sono. This is 
the idea. Sono's rice fields reached quite up 
to the temple grove. He would build a 
shrine in honor of the temple's god a little 
this side the gate of the temple and near the 
road, and he would sink a well there. It 
would needs be a deep well, it is true, but 
Sono's crops had been good and he would not 
begrudge the cost. Having dug the well he 
would place a tablet before the shrine bear- 
ing a declaration of the dedication of his of- 
fering to the temple's god on behalf of those 
who worshiped there. He would give each 
234 



NIHON NO ICHIBAN SHIWAI JIMBUTSU. 

worshiper all the pure water he might desire 
for a bath, and would not charge him for it. 
All the worshiper need do would be to help 
himself. 

Sono had been a traveler. He knew 
"Yokohama, Nagasaki, Hakodate hoi" per- 
sonally, for he had been there. He had seen 
missionaries in Tokio and merchants in the 
treaty ports. One of the missionaries had 
shown him a praying water wheel from India. 
It was part of a collection the pious man had 
gathered at various stations he had occupied 
in the Far East. Sono delighted in these 
things, but the praying wheel pleased him 
most. If he had had a place to set one up on 
his west coast rice fields he would have 
begged the missionary to get him one from 
the ancient home of Buddhism. 

Some days after he had seen this supplica- 
tion-made-simple apparatus, so much simpler 
than the man-power prayer wheels of the 
Tokio temples, Sono received an invitation 
from the missionary's friend, who was a silk 
merchant in Yokohama. This man wished to 
make friends on the west coast, especially in 
Fukui and Kanagawa Kens, where the worms 
spin well. Sono, always ready ** to see the 

235 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

new thing," to learn something and have a 
good time, took the train at Shimbashi that 
afternoon, and within an hour was at the 
•* Yama Namban," as jin-riki-sha coolies 
called the merchant's house. 

Sono Hito had a wonderful time at this 
foreigner's home. The yoshoku, the setsuin, 
the nedai and the danru, with its kemuri- 
dashi, were marvelous to him, but the thing 
that tickled him especially was what he called 
the midzu-age kikai, or water-raising ma- 
chine, not far from the kitchen .door. He 
played with this a half hour steadily, until he 
was all of a sweat and had flooded his host's 
back yard and turned the tennis court into a 
soppy marsh. 

Nothing would do but he must have one 
to operate at his home over on the west 
coast, and as the kikai was not in stock at 
any of the Yokohama agencies, Sono Hito's 
host promised to get one for him from San 
Francisco. 

" I'll send it over to you as soon as it ar- 
rives," said Mo Hitosu Smith San (he was the 
second Smith to come to Yokohama after 
Perry's departure. The first Smith was simply 
'♦Smith San," but the second was Mohitotsu, 
236 



NIHON NO ICHIBAN SHIWAI JIMBUTSU. 

i. e., more than one Smith, Mr.). He did bet- 
ter than that, however; he took the apparatus 
over himself three months later, and showed 
his Japanese friend how to set it up and how 
he could use it to fill a storage tank so as to 
have water for emergencies. 

So Sono had men dig the well wide and 
deep. There was not such another well in 
that part of the country. 

Kono Hito, across the road, had nothing in 
the least comparable. He would not have 
spent so much money on a well had he been 
ever so rich, and in these days he thought 
himself a very poor man indeed. It grieved 
him to think anything that cost money should 
be necessary in his household. The sight of 
his people eating made him ill, and the pros- 
perity across the road was like fire against his 
face. He could not endure to look at it. 

But as Kono Hito suffered Sono Hito 
worked at his well shrine. The building was 
as simple in design as a Shinto temple. In- 
side, over at one end, was a broad, shallow 
wooden tank for the bather to sit in, and be- 
fore the tank ample floor space where the 
worshiper would have room to use his tenui, 
or scrubbing towel, such as all Japanese carry 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

with them. At the end opposite the tank was 
the shrine, and beside the tank was a device 
strange to the natives on the west coast. 
Sono said it was a praying wheel. There was 
a gaku over it bearing the inscription, *' Bon- 
no kuno," ** all lust is grief," in Chinese char- 
acters. 

An American would not have thought the 
device was a prayer wheel. He would doubt 
if the Japanese used water prayer wheels, 
and would have said " chain pump," though 
one may assert with considerable confidence 
that he never before had seen a chain pump 
boxed in an image of Buddha, with a third 
arm, in the shape of a crank, reaching out 
from one side and projecting over a bathtub. 

Sono Hito knew all about the apparatus, 
both from the American and the west coast 
viewpoint. He was the only person that did; 
but, like Brer Rabbit, " he wasn't saying 
nuffin." 

In fact, the American who did see this de- 
vice guessed right the very first time. He saw 
right away it was not a praying wheel, but he 
kept his thoughts quiet. Sono Hito might 
call it a praying wheel, and each bather, as 
he sat in the tub, might turn Buddha's third 
238 



NIHON NO ICHIBAN SHIWAI JIMBUTSU. 
arm with vigor and pray fervently, chanting 
his petitions in unison with the rat-tat-rat-tat- 
tattle in Buddha's stomach; to the Yankee's 
mind the thing would be a chain pump still. 

Soon after this visit of Smith San's it was 
that the patriarch of the Home of Happy 
Husbandmen had evolved his scheme of 
joining piety and prosperity in happy com- 
bination by giving faithful Buddhists a cata- 
ract bath free and a chance at the praying 
wheel thrown in. The ancient peoples of 
China and India had used these wheels with 
august results/^Sono Hito told the worshipers, 
and then he showed them also how, after 
pious revolutions, the Divine Pleasure would 
give them water from above. 

Buddhists take cataract baths even in win- 
ter, though possibly they do not enjoy them 
then, at least not with obvious hilarity. In To- 
kio the traveler sees native men and women 
standing naked under a fall of water in some 
of the temple parks. In December and Jan- 
uary this water is well down to the freezing 
point. 

There is virtue in a cataract. Wherever 
one is that place is sacred. The natives take 
great pains in making artificial falls whenever 
23^ 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

possible, especially in the neighborhood of 
temples. They are purifiers beyond all else, 
these "from heaven descending" streams. 
Therefore, when Sono made his offer of a 
free bath — a cataract bath! something the 
region about the beloved temple had not 
known since the great jishin, the earthquake 
that hundreds of years before had broken up 
the country, let out the upper waters and 
ruined their plans of holy ablution — he be- 
came the most popular man in his ken. 

He was deeply grateful to his American 
friend who had showed him how to rig the 
pump so as to deliver water overhead, where, 
in the roof of the shrine, Sono had built a 
sort of distributing reservoir. Part of the 
water that the worshipers pumped into this 
poured down in a stream onto the head of 
whoever might be working at the crank as 
he or she sat in the tub. The greater part, 
however, flowed away into the channels in 
the rice fields. As the pious came, there- 
fore, and worked the praying wheel, they ac- 
complished three things at once — irrigation, 
purification and "to pump." These ex- 
plained how Sono Hito kept things green and 
why Kono Hito said ** Komaru." 
240 



NIHON NO ICHIBAN SHIWAI JIMBUTSU. 

Kono Hito worried greatly over the early 
yellowishness of his fields. He did not un- 
derstand how Sono Hito managed. He never 
had been to Yokohama, and he knew noth- 
ing of chain pumps. He believed that Sono 
Hito's piety had won favor in Buddha's eyes, 
and that the gods had blessed the fields as a 
mark of divine pleasure. If he could have a 
bath shrine he might win favor, too, but that 
would cost money, and then to give the 
baths free, not to charge even a ni rin piece 
for them — the thought was too painful. 

Still, if Buddha would smile on him, "it 
might pay,** thought Kono. It would pay — ^ 
but to spend the money. ** Domu! Komaru 
ne.** So he devised how he might be pious 
cheaply. 

** Namu Omahen de giisu,"said the wife of 
Kono Hito when a man called one morning 
to see her lord. She meant he was not at 
home. (In Tokio she might have said: ** lye 
ori masen de gozaimasu.'* That would have 
conveyed a similar idea.) 

The man went away. Down the road a bit 

he heard a voice calling ** Korario,** which, 

to those who live in that region, means 

** come here.** The man went in the direc- 

241 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

tion of the call and found Kono Hito busy 
with a carpenter and a well digger, discuss- 
ing plans for an opposition bath shrine. 
Kono Hito was in agony over the cost, but 
the workmen had reached their limit, and, 
with many bows, were protesting that if they 
cut their price even a mo lower they would 
not have enough left to pay for the air they 
breathed while they worked. 

So Kono gave orders for them to begin at 
once. Within a week the plans had material- 
ized. There was a well with a pair of buck- 
ets, a tub and a shrine dedicated to the use of 
worshipers. It was not a cataract bath, nor 
was the well deep, but Kono Hito hoped 
Buddha would take his penury into account 
and smile as sweetly as though the water fell 
direct from a spring on the mountain side. 

But Buddha did not smile. No one went 
to Kono Hito's shrine bath unless too many 
had gathered at the place across the way. 
** Without worshipers Buddha will not smile," 
said the unhappy husbandman. *' Komaru 
nel" And later he said to himself, ''Doshi 
mashoka," which brought him inspiration. 

He took a station at a point that com- 
manded a view of the road, and whenever 
2^Z 



NIHON NO ICHIBAN SHIWAI JIMBUTSU. 

he saw those coming who might be wor- 
shipers he went into Hito's shrine, sat him- 
self in the tank, turned the crank and prayed 
vigorously. 

This was a deep scheme, for the pilgrims, 
after waiting long for Kono to finish, would 
conclude such fervent piety should not be 
disturbed. Leaving the zealot in Sono Hito's 
tub, they would cross over to do as best they 
might with two buckets. When they had 
done so they emptied these buckets on the 
roadside. Buddha did not purr. 

Kono Hito, however, as he ground and 
ground away, taking twenty or thirty baths a 
day, chilling himself in the cataract and 
pumping three times as much water over 
Sono Hito's fields as he brought down onto 
his poll, had much tenacity and a belief that 
if he could keep the pious to his side of the 
road long enough he would receive the 
blessings his soul yearned for. 

He pumped and prayed heroically, resting 
little and eating less, while Sono Hito took a 
peep at him occasionally and showed not the 
least vexation. 

Kono wondered at this, for he had been 
rather fearful of discovery, and when he 

243 



TALES FROM TOKIO. 

learned that the man he was so jealous of 
had seen him and had said nothing, he did 
not understand. Nor did he understand why 
Buddha would not smile upon his crops. 

As he pumped he puzzled upon these 
things and grew more and more attenuated. 

Overbathing, even with prayers, is not 
good. When Junsa, the policeman, called 
Isha, the physician, to Sono Hito's shrine one 
evening and let his lantern light fall on Kono 
Hito's face, the man of medicine said, ** Water 
on the brain." Two days later they buried 
him, and Sono Hito gave money for a stone 
column to mark the resting place of his 
ashes. He really had helped Sono Hito a 
good deal. 



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